NDU leader Vazgen Manukyan says on the occasion of not achieving unification inside the opposition.
– NDU decided not to participate in the upcoming elections. Whether no party proposed to be involved in its proportional list?
– Proposals have been made, but we don’t only want to become parliamentarians: I have been a parliamentarian for four times, and NDU has had a faction. The overwhelming majority of the people are against the current authorities. There will be 20-30 oppositionists in the NA who won’t be able to exert any influence on anything. I am not against others’ participation in the NA elections but it is inadmissible for me and for the NDU. National Assembly isn’t a political structure any more.
– Anyway, NDU was negotiating round the joint participation with other oppositionists. Now all participants of the negotiations affirm that they have done their best to unify the opposition. It isn’t understandable, who did prevent their unification?
– If anything is failed, perhaps everybody is guilty. On this occasion I can’t say that we were innocent, the rest were guilty. It wasn’t right. But there is an important issue: our aim wasn’t the formation of a big alliance and presentation in the parliament. The point was that we should form a structure, which would be able to change the situation effectively, to gain people’s confidence and fight against frauds. As there is no leader, the NDU’s approach was the following: a body like “Karabakh” committee is being formed from the leaders of 4-5 parties by the principle of equal right, and during the press conference our places in the list will be decided by lot. Unfortunately, we didn’t succeed.
– You and some other parties affirm that the alliance should be formed by the principle of equality. While PPA opposes that when “Justice” was formed in 2003, what had been changed, whether the small parties inside it have become so powerful?
– The point isn’t the power of small parties. The alliance was formed in very natural conditions in 2003, as a result of struggle between Stepan Demirchyan and Robert Kocharyan. Then the NA elections were held and the leader was Stepan Demirchyan. But nowadays the situation has been changed. Some parties left the alliance and the ratings of some parties and persons have also been changed.
– “National Unity” leader Artashes Geghamyan had told “Aravot”: “Small parties which don’t have human and organizational resources to participate in the pre-electoral struggle, the only way for those parties is the way of unification”. Do you agree with this?
– If we lived in a normal democratic state, I would never be for the NDU to form an alliance as we have our principles and ideology. Nowadays such a situation has been formed in Armenia when it is possible to win by the “Black and white” struggle. We live in such country, which is built on corruption, bribery and lie; we should join to destroy it.