Raffi Hovhannisyan, leader of the “Heritage” parliamentary faction, informed on Friday at the “Viewpoint” club that “Heritage” has congratulated all of the factions of the fourth convening of the National Assembly and wished for productive work.
As you know, “Heritage” plans on being a “constructive” opposition to the existing government which, as Hovhannisyan announced right after the elections, falsified the votes of “Heritage” and “wrote” only 80,000 votes, instead of the actual 250,000. Nevertheless, Hovannisian also announced that “Heritage” is ready for “constructive” co-operation with everyone, including the authorities. However, we will get to that a little later.
One of the speakers participating in the press conference on Friday was Anahit Bakhshyan, who is a member of the “Heritage” faction and the wife of former vice-speaker of the National Assembly Yuri Bakhshyan, who was murdered at the National Assembly on October 27, 1999. Bakhshyan mentioned that she still doesn’t envision her role, and what she has to do in parliament, but added that she will finish up what her husband left off. She also informed that she had come to parliament to participate in the session of the permanent committee on education and science on Friday, but they had told her that the committee still hasn’t been formed, and the session didn’t take place. In response to the question as to why and how he participated in the recent government session, Hovhannisyan replied that participation in the government session is “provided by law” and assured that representatives of “Heritage” will “make every effort” to participate in all of the government sessions.
Touching upon their format for participating in the upcoming Armenian presidential elections, Hovhannisyan mentioned that they would share their information with journalists when the time comes. Until then, “Heritage” is going to “shape the democratic process”. But why didn’t “Heritage” take part in the first session of the National Assembly, and instead the leader of the party participated in the first session of the government? Raffi Hovhannisyan explained that by the already well known reasons: the election results are being disputed in the Constitutional Court, and they were not informed about the session by the “corresponding bodies”. According to him, by not participating in the National Assembly session, it’s not that “Heritage” was “offended, or was complaining about something”, rather it was simply trying to follow the laws of the country. As you recall, during the first session of parliament the deputies gave an oath. Of course, that ceremony of oath turned into a show, but since “Heritage” was not taking part, the members of the party didn’t take the oath. How are they preparing to solve the issue concerning the oath? According to Hovhannisyan, they will solve the issue concerning the oath by signing the document. The leader of the “Heritage” parliamentary faction also announced that they are an “Armenia-centered opposition” and that they are going to continue following up on, in his words, the cases of political prisoners Alexander Arzumanyan, Zhirair Sefilyan, and Vardan Malkhasyan, and demand their release, as there should not be any political prisoners in Armenia.
The speakers at the press conference did not circumvent issues concerning the uniting of the opposition and the policy adopted by the opposition. Hovhannisyan argued that nearly 30% of the votes of the people of Armenia went to waste due to the wrong strategy of the opposition.
“The same standard that I have set and expect from the authorities also goes for the opposition. The opposition committed a political error and must correct it,” announced the leader of “Heritage”, assuring that he has done everything to unite the opposition before the elections, but nothing worked out. According to Hovhannisyan, the opposition must learn from its mistakes.
The error of the opposition, according to him, was that “each person saw the solution within himself and his surroundings” and besides that, the opposition, in his opinion, was not able to correctly predict the post-electoral processes. Accepting that he is also partly to blame for the situation that was created, Hovhannisyan also mentioned the following:
“The opposition must correct the error of looking at life through its own prism.”
He is certain that there are “respectful activists and dedicated individuals” among both the government and the opposition.
It became clear on Friday that Raffi Hovhannisyan is for “constructive” co-operation, in fact “Heritage” plans on co-operating that way with the parties out of parliament, as well as all of the parties in parliament.
“Just like we are cooperating with our colleagues outside of parliament, the co-operation in parliament presupposes constructive, horizontal relations. There will be no special relations, but there will be the spirit of co-operation,” informed Hovhannisyan.