The pro-government members of Armenia’s National Assembly on Monday voted unanimously in favor of setting up an ad hoc commission tasked with a parliamentary investigation into the March 1-2 deadly clashes between opposition supporters and security forces. The Heritage faction boycotted the vote on the grounds that the National Party had rejected their proposals.
Thus, the parliament opposition represented by the Heritage faction opted out of the vote and was not even present at the chamber at the time of voting. As Secretary of the Heritage faction Styopa Safaryan mentioned the there is a preliminary decision to abstain from having any representative in the commission yet. “Since our basic proposals were not accepted,” he explained. Heritage faction member Armen Martirosyan said that the faction’s participation in the commission’s work was in doubt. The newly established commission held its first meeting later yesterday electing Republican Samvel Nikoyan as its chairman (the vice-chairman’s position is reserved for a Heritage representative). During the conversation with us an opposition MP Armen Martirosyan ensured that their recommendations were ignored without any substantiation. “There were mainly no grounds for the refusal,” he said. For example, according to one of the recommendations of the Heritage it was proposed to demand from local government to provide duplicates of police and NSS copies of videos, documents and records and uncut versions of the videos of the March 1 events. That recommendation was however denied despite the fact that the Heritage mentioned that the secret materials must be reviewed in a closed door session. Another recommendation of the Heritage was also dropped back by the Parliament. According to that recommendation the Prosecutor General’s office should have provided copies of any materials related to the investigation. Besides that they are offering to authorize the commission to demand from the prosecutor to provide expertise documents, etc. “They also denied our idea of inviting any citizen or statesmen, who was directly or indirectly involved in the March 1 events. In order to participate we decided to make our recommendations in advance before giving our consent to be part of the commission,” said Martirosyan. By the way, according to the Prosperous Armenia MP Naira Zohrabyan she claimed during the Saturday session that in the event of necessity the commission must invite former statesmen to the questioning and expect their feedback on that. However her recommendation was declined with the substantiation that there is no legal regime, which would enable the NA MPs to call the former statesmen to an interrogation. “The NA doesn’t have the authority to mandate them and make them be present at the sessions. It is up to them to decide whether they want to be present or not. However if they don’t show up it will mean that they have something to hide,” said Zohrabyan. Yesterday the NA was in a serious turmoil, which pertaining to who is going to attached to the commission from each faction. Although the factions have preliminarily informed who they are going to nominate many of the members were embarrassed whether it was worth to take part in the mass fiasco. Even independent MP Victor Dallakyan, who is one of the initiators of this commission, refused to take part in it. For the formation of the NA temporary commission, according to the decision each parliamentary faction represented two MPs. Thus Samvel Nikoyan and Hermine Naghdalyan will represent the Republican Party, Artashes Avoyan and Hovhannes Margaryan – Legal State Party, Artashes Shahbazyan and Artsvik Minasyan – ARFD, Aram Safaryan and Naira Zohrabyan will represent the Prosperous Armenia Party in the temporary committee. For the representation of the six MPs not included in the factions one MP was nominated for each seat. 87 MPs supported the candidacy of MP Lyova Khachatryan. “I think that Dallakyan did the wrong thing when he refused to take part in the ad hoc commission. As a main author of the bill it would be logical and fair if he was represented there among the intendment MPs. For us it was really surprising to know that someone else is going to be nominated instead,” said Zohrabyan. Unlike the Prosperous Armenia MP for Dallakyan Lyova Kachatryan’s nomination was not surprising at all. “Even on June 11 I stated that I don’t want to be a member of chairman to the commission,” he stated. As a response to our question as to why he doesn’t want to be involved in the commission initiated by him Dallakyan said that he had mentioned that he was not going to participate in that commission when answering Heritage faction member Zaruhi Postanjyan’s question. “Postanjyan asked me if I would agree if they offered me to chair the commission and I said that I don’t have any ambitions or wish like that.” “I think that it is not right to include someone in the omission, who has been the main initiator of the commission because certain people may interpret it in various ways,” answered Dallakyan. To our question whether there are now interpretations as to which Dallakyan refuses to accept political responsibility the latter said, “I don’t have to comment on the statements of some ignorant ones. Why would they say that if the MPs can at any time participate in the commission sessions and ask questions.” Thus, the conduct of an “independent, transparent and credible inquiry” was one of the key demands addressed at the Armenian authorities by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) in a resolution adopted in mid-April. The European Union and the United States have also stressed the need to establish all circumstances of the March 1 violence in Yerevan that left at least ten people dead and more than 100 others injured. Therefore, it is not hard to forecast that this commission will draw a final conclusion, according to which everyone will yearn after the statement of the prosecutor general by considering it so much milder than the one that the commission can possibly make. The only thing left to do is not to go “mad.”