The prospect that Armenia may be deprived of its voting right in the PACE doesn’t quite concern the RA government any more. The latter have decided to change the tactics of persuading the Europeans.
By being ensured that the situation is quite desperate the government has decided that before the meeting with the PACE co-rapporteurs prepare as much criticism to the PACE as possible. By doing that they are trying to make Europe understand that no European structure would ever be so important to make the Armenian government abide with the will of Europe. They won’t make any decisions against their will and that is release the political prisoners. In order to make their attitude more emphasized the government secretly discusses the option of organizing a protest action when meeting John Prescott and Jorge Colombier. Of course, it is clear that this is not a means to blackmail the Europeans to make a decision on January 27 on behalf of Armenia. The only thing is that the government doesn’t have any other way of avoiding sanctions and the hysteria, which was created during the last week, only has an advocacy purpose. The government has finally realized that no matter what Armenia will be deprived of its voting right in the PACE and if till now the government was hopeful that the head of the Armenian delegation in the PACE Davit Harutyunyan would by miracle persuade the Europeans that there are no political prisoners in Armenia now the government realized that not only Harutyunyan is not able to save the situation but neither is the whole government echelon. Therefore, the government has started to circulate the version that if Armenia is deprived of its voting right there will be no “pan-national catastrophe.” According to our information the government has decided not to spend a single effort on preventing the Europeans from depriving the Armenians of their voting right. According to their scenario Armenia must now be deprived of the right to vote in the PACE but by the June session of the PACE they might be able to correct the situation. It means the government is intending to keep the political detainees in jail till June and grant amnesty to them only after the summer session. This is the plan of the government no matter how primitive it may look at first sight. Let’s mention that prior to each PACE session the session of the monitoring commission is held, during which the issue of the authority of the voting right of each member state is discussed. Thus such a prospect awaits the Armenian delegation in the PACE. According to our information a team has been formed within the government coalition, the coordinator of which the chairman of the Legal State party Artur Baghdasaryan. The latter is trying to make attempts to lobby for the Armenian government through his tight links with the European community. For that purpose prior to Christmas Holidays the member of the ARF faction Vahan Hovhannisyan and Davit Harutyunyan were sent to the PACE for the same purpose but no tangible result was achieved. According to our information Harutyunyan is planning to quit the position of the Armenian delegation in the PACC after the PACE summer session. By the way one of the NA MPs told us that the letter of the NA chairman Hovik Abrahamyan sent to the leadership of the PACE (in which he was persuading them not to apply sanctions against Armenia) has caused a quite serious discontent among Europeans. First of all the leadership of the PACE got surprised about the fact that the chairman of the NA parliament sends a letter to them and asks them to persuades the other European MPs not to vote against Armenia (according to the constitution of the country the MPs are free to practice their activity). According to well-known sources Artur Baghdasaryan wrote the letter for Abrahamyan. The government doesn’t much care about consequences because their objective is not the reputation of Armenia. At present few NA MPs speak about the possibility of negative consequences for Armenia. According to their Armenia if currently Armenia is considered a 4-5 class country then after January 27 it will become a 10-class country and that stain will never be cleaned off Armenia.