LET’S COMPETE CIVILLY

  Armen Roustamyan, the head of ARF presidential candidate Vahan Hovannisyan’s pre-electoral headquarter called his competitors yesterday.

 In answer to “Aravot’s” question whether the ARF will listen to the Yerevan Municipality call and won’t hold processions and mass meetings because of bad weather conditions and heavy traffic, Armen Roustamyan said: “We won’t follow that call. What does it mean, avoid of processions? Let’s avoid of campaign as well. How we can form the pre-electoral campaign then? I don’t think that this is a good summon, when Armenia is in the eve of the pre-electoral campaign. All officials should simply understand that the political forces should manage to use the authority determined by the Constitution and Legislation. The weight of a political force is just to use all existed possibilities, especially when those possibilities are not so high for the opposition. One of those possibilities is the processions. But they offered us not to hold those processions.” And more, Mr., Roustamyan noted that they will call the rest of forces to arouse the voters’ interest. Armen Roustamyan also noted that they will encourage ideological-political debates. We reminded that he was claiming before Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s nomination that the ARF will welcome the First President’s return: “And if Ter-Petrosyan is involved in the struggle, it will be more ideological”. In answer to our question whether the struggle is not ideological yet, he said: “We think that the debates in Armenia are not in a required level yet. Several forces are already for debates, and it is very good. Competition is just to debate and not to argue”.

RPA council member Armen Ashotyan declared on “Shant” TV on January 16, that it will be very useful for the ARF to become parliamentary opposition after the presidential elections. In answer to this advice, Armen Roustamyan said: “We have been opposition before, and have done very useful work. ARF has been in both arenas, we have no problem here, and our standpoints and ideology are not changed, just the opposite, our methods are changed.”