The conflict broke up between the representatives of the Armenian opposition parties Heritage and Dahsnaktsutyun Zaruhi Postanjyan and Armen Rustamyan, who are delegates in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, threatens to move to the inter-party arena.
Let us remember that due to the key role of the head of the Armenian delegation in the PACE Davit Harutyunyan in the delegation the place of the opposition was occupied by Armen Rustamyan. And Zaruhi Postanjyan was moved from the main delegation to the reserve. And now in Strasbourg all the members of the delegation are doing their best to keep Postanjyan away from participating in the discussion on the issues of Armenia. The members of the delegation, especially Rustamyan and Postanjyan are scorning each other. For example, the Dashnak politician was saying that “it took them 30 minutes to ask Postanjyan out and 10 minutes to discuss the issue of Armenia.” Postanjyan instead pronounced that “Rustamyan is trying to cover the reality in our country,” etc. And regardless of how truthful the delegates are in their allegations (especially Postanjyan) these parties have reasons not to cooperate with each other. Will the parliamentary factions, which the delegates were representing, discuss the events in Strasbourg and will this effect their further activity? Let us remember that in the fall of the previous year these two parties united against the Turkish-Armenian protocols. The head of the Heritage party bureau Armen Rustamyan didn’t wish to comment on these issues and he found it correct to wait for the return of his colleague so that he gets more updated about what had happened. The ARF waits for not only the return of Rustamyan but also the viewpoint of the Heritage. “I think that we will advert to this issue. Here we have to correct something. Does Postanjyan express her opinion or the opinion of her party? If it’s the viewpoint of the faction then it will be difficult to go the same road together. We should verify these issues,” responded the ARF secretary of faction Artyusha Shahbazyan. According to the head of the Heritage faction Stepan Safaryan, they have cooperated with the ARF only in the framework of opposing the Armenia-Turkey protocols. In regard of various issues, such as democracy in Armenia, issues of political prisoners, annihilation of the March 1 events, reforms of the political system as well as the NKR conflict, there are lots of differences between the Heritage and the ARF. “Even the methods of struggle have been different between us regardless of how actively we had activated against the protocols and the “no” actions. We were not sufficed with the ARF struggle. We are terribly angry about the Constitutional Court ruling but they lauded this ruling. Even in regard of the Armenia-Turkey protocols we have numerous tactical contradictions. For example, they have lauded Serzh Sargsyan’s statement that Armenia should deflect from the process. We find this dangerous. We, on the contrary, stated that Turkey should bring up its conditions on the table,” says Safaryan. When speaking of the changes in the Armenian delegation to PACE, Mr. Safaryan says that they wish that the main composition of the PACE delegation includes both the ARF and the Heritage. “It is very bad that our opposition colleagues the cooperation with the government prefer to cooperation with the opposition. It is bad that as a common front we cannot support the same ideas to make our work more effective. The ARF should have realized that there is the need to isolate the Heritage and as an opposition counterpart, he shouldn’t have let this happen. We are interested that our opposition counterparts are strong because their strength is ours and theirs is ours,” continues Safaryan. Is it possible that the cooperation between the ARF and the Heritage may stop after the return of the delegation? “The Heritage doesn’t get affected with emotions. If we set relations with any force then we do it in the margin possible. It would be desirable that this margin was large. We have controversies with the Congress regarding the NKR conflict and the Armenian-Turkish relations but we have a similar approach regarding the issue of the political prisoners,” concluded Safaryan. The ARF, which hasn’t opposed the government on March 1 and afterwards, still doesn’t oppose the government’s approach in the PACE. What is the purpose of the style of working of the ARF? Is their goal to cooperate with the government or us? “In the opposition arena we are cooperating with a range of political forces. And if somebody says the right thing we don’t care what camp they belong to. The delegation doesn’t go to Strasbourg to create an internal fight. It goes there to protect the interests of Armenia. Do you know that we have had our own attitude to the report of March 1? And Rustamyan had to present this to the PACE. We have been in the commission and have tried to be objective and I think many people thought of us that way. Many opposition politicians have said this and many of them have been grateful to us. We have signified the report, where there were many recommendations. I think the report was quite balanced,” responded Shahbazyan.