During a press conference on Friday, leader of the National Democratic Party Shavarsh Kocharyan had this to say with regards to the secret recording of the conversation between “Country of Law” leader Arthur Baghdasaryan and the British diplomat and the qualification of Arthur Baghdasaryan as a “betrayer of the nation”:
“First of all, recording conversations secretly is unconstitutional. As far as Arthur Baghdasaryan the politician is concerned, I would like to invite him to an interview on live television to give my party’s evaluation. If he dares to come to an interview on live television, I have many things to say to him. For now I can only state two things. Unfortunately, there are cheated depositors in the country. Yes, that is the government’s fault, but it is even more unfortunate that depositors (the people, in this case) were betrayed again,” said Sh. Kocharyan, adding that European integration which politicians, including Arthur Baghdasaryan, talk about, must be the essence of a political party and the politician for that matter. As an example, he recalled the events of April 12.
“After April 12, the president of PACE did what any man who is really the carrier of a system of democratic values would do. He made a call for his deputy, meaning me, to be immediately fired and I was fired. Then speaker of the National Assembly Arthur Baghdasaryan not only didn’t make that move, but he also disposed the entire National Assembly territory to the forces and turned it into a military base. When they arrested me, they took me, the arrested National Assembly deputy, to that territory of the National Assembly. This is proof of what it means to be really democratic and pretend to be democratic to win the reputation of the West and the people.”
However, Shavarsh Kocharyan refuses to qualify Arthur Baghdasaryan’s act as “national betrayal” just because the “material was illegally procured”.