Sometimes it is a great luck to see some of the NA MPs at the Parliament because they mostly use their deputy mandate to travel worldwide at the expense of the Parliament. These MPs don’t miss a single chance to participate in even the most senseless conferences that may take place abroad. Sometimes the thing gets so complicated that the MPs don’t even manage to get off from one plane and have to get on the next plane right from the airport. In this convention of the Parliament the chairman of the Heritage party Raffi Hovhannisyan is incomparable with his traveling frequency, who because of the same reason refused to head the Heritage faction and passed it to Armen Martirosyan. The next positions after Hovhannisyan occupy the head of the NA committee on legal affairs Davit Harutyunyan and the head of the committee on foreign relations Armen Rustamyan. Later the list continues ARF member Artur Aghabekyan and Prosperous Armenia member Arevik Petrosyan. For example, Raffi Hovhannisyan, who is a member of the RA NA PACE delegation and the Parliamentary Assembly of the NATO, 2-4 times participates in such sessions, which relates to pregnancy issues or abortion, etc. In order to understand how busy our opposition MP is within the PACE all we have to do is visit the PACE website and see what commissions he is a member of. He is a member of 7 commissions – human rights, media, culture, education and science, fight against terrorism, etc. However, in between these activities whenever he has time he participates in other trips of the NA. Besides all this Raffi Hovhannisyan even managed to be a monitor during the presidential elections of Russia in February. The NA keeps in secret the whole list of the business trips of the NA MPs during all of the months and days. So we will present only the names of the MPs, who visited various countries found out from different NA commissions. And so in March Raffi Hovhannisyan left for Paris in order to participate in the next session of the PACE. Later he left for Athens with Armen Rustamyan. In April in the framework of the NATO parliamentary assembly Raffi Hovhannisyan left for Belgrade with Artur Aghabekyan. In May he first left for Paris to the PACE session and then to Berlin to attend the NATO session. In September (in June, July and August there were many trips as well, however we were not able to find out details) Davit Harutyunyan, head of the NA commission on European integration Avet Adonts and Armen Rustamyan went to Paris to participate in the PACE session. At the end of October Raffi Hovhannisyan left for Prague to participate in some discussion on cultural legacy. On almost the same days davit Harutyunyan was in Madrid. November is also full of business trips for the MPs who are fond of tourism. For example, according to the information received from the NA commissions on November 13 Artur Aghabekyan and Raffi Hovhannisyan will be leaving fro Valencia. Davit Harutyunyan and Artak Davtyan from the RPA faction will be in Berlin for 7-8 days. After the business trip in Berlin Harutyunyan will leave for Paris for several days to participate in the PACE session. In the NA these MPs are called “Christmas lemonade” or “precious boy” because seeing these people in the NA is not only difficult but also impossible. And if some MPs report after their trips at the NA then some others don’t even bother to do so because of their tough schedule and absence of office hours. Or maybe because they don’t have anything to say. By the way some of the MPs are involved in such inter-parliamentary commissions and are so far from their activities that they call certain state body representatives and commissions heads to receive information on what to say during these meetings. Those relate to the parliamentary commission on the investigation of the March 1 events or the issues that had been discussed so far. For example, Arevik Petrosyan chairs simultaneously several inter-parliamentary commissions and is a member of some other commissions. She is a member of the RA NA and Georgian parliamentary inter-parliamentary commissions and Armenia-Slovakia friendship parliamentary group. Meanwhile she heads the Germany-Armenia, Greece-Armenia, China-Armenia friendship parliamentary groups. ARF member Artur Aghabekyan is the head of the NATO parliamentary commission in the NA of RA, Armenia-Brazil, Armenia-Moldova and Armenia-Philippines parliamentary groups. Meanwhile he is an average member of the Armenia-Slovakia, Armenia-Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia-Belgium friendship parliamentary groups.
