On Saturday newly established Liberal party of Armenia (LPA) held its founding meeting in the session hall of the government building. The founding meeting elected Hovhannes Hovhannisyan to preside the party.
This party involves people who left Hovhannes Hovhannisyan’s party after he had some conflicts with the former secretary of that party and the incumbent president of that party Edward Antinyan. Hovhannes Hovhannisyan’s newly established party assures that this new party will advocate the same principles as the other party he used to have. Currently this new party is trying to create “a third force” with the help of a number of other parties.
At present the LPA has 3678 members from Yerevan and the regions.
First president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan, PPA president Stepan Demirchyan, president of the Republic party Aram Z. Sargsyan were invited to participate in the founding meeting.
Hovhannes Hovhannisyan presented the program of their new party and said that they will follow the principle of liberalism because “liberal values are the basement of the state and statehood”.
“The purpose of the party is to support the formation of the civic society, protection of social justice and fighting poverty, developing justice and democracy in the country, fighting corruption,” said H. Hovhannisyan and added that their party would contribute to developing closer relations with the US and establishing long-term economic and political cooperation with America. He says that they will try to keep the historical relations with Russia based on the principle of equity between countries. In a word, they are complementary. By the way, this new party has already signed a document certifying that they are joining the Armenian national congress. Hovhannisyan said that together with the congress they will struggle in favor of this country because everything depends on us but not on the others.
Hovhannisyan says that in order to solve the problems of this country, which mainly concern the legal, social, state administration and state system, we need to have a free compatible economic system, form a strong civic society, etc. They think that the inner and external problems of the country are interconnected and their solutions can be found in complex.
Levon Ter-Petrosyan said in his welcome speech that one of the main ideologies of the congress is to establish an environment of unity to mobilize and politicize the broad groups of the public. Levon Ter-Petrosyan says that unlike people the parties have already learnt how to deal with the government and they are going to make the government to deal with the people as well. “No government can win any victory against people, victories vest in the people,” Levon Ter-Petrosyan said. He says that despite the fact who will govern the country during the upcoming 5-10 years all they have to appreciate the efforts of the Armenian national congress. “No criminal, no cleptocratic figure can stop respecting this factor. It is a pity that now we don’t have anyone with high intellectual merits, who can feel the existence and importance of this factor. Even if there are individuals who are intellectual and understand everything, they don’t have the necessary tools to make the decision makers understand what they want,” he said.
By the way, yesterday the national congress launched an action of granting membership of the congress to individuals in the North Avenue. Those citizens who want to join the congress can approach the registration desk in the North Avenue and fill in questionnaires. Also they have to mention how they can help the congress (distribution of campaign materials, providing with vehicles, offices, etc.). With such initiative the Congress wants to mobilize its activists and all those people who are nonpartisan but follow the ideologies of their movement. It is worth mentioning that the number of the citizens joining the congress is growing.