According to chairperson of the state-legal commission of the National Assembly (NA), head of the working group of the dialogue between the Armenian National Congress (ANC) and the coalition Davit Harutyunyan, ANC do this with the dialogue
– ANC, stopping the sit-down strikes and rallies till the end of this month, adopted a resolution, an article of which refers to the fact that ANC have eliminated the atmosphere of fear existing after March 1 by the sit-down action; do you agree?
– I do not share that claim and think that after every sit-down strike they will try to present another success, and it is probably the best way to see what is going on in the society and try to present the existing fact as an achievement of the uncompromising opposition struggle.
– The issue of dialogue has become kind of amorphous, first you and they wished to dialogue, then they made an offer, you made some demands, now they make some demands, saying that the dialogue is not a priority anymore; other problems are important. As the head of the working group, what is your position on this issue?
– My position is the following; dialogue can be a success and give a result that is necessary for the state and not for the political forces, only if the two sides fully realize its importance. Unfortunately, I am under the impression that at the moment ANC use the dialogue, as just an element of the political struggle and nothing more. It certainly cannot guarantee a successful dialogue. The moment the political forces, in this case ANC, start to think more about the country, from that moment on dialogue will take place and will be successful.
– Other members of the coalition working group claim that coalition are for dialogue, as civilized culture in politics, as the best way to solve issues, but don’t you think it is right that the coalition should take a step to resume the dialogue; in any case, it was suspended, when the counterarguments of the coalition were discussed?
– We pointed out that we were ready to resume the dialogue at any moment, but we are against the definition, “if you ask us we will discuss”. This definition is unacceptable. At the end of the day ANC have suspended the dialogue, and any moment they say they are ready to continue, we will discuss that, we are ready to sit around that table again. Any other definition is unacceptable.
– ANC mention in their statements that they think span parliamentary and presidential elections are more urgent at the moment, than the dialogue. According to you, is this another political trick? Or ANC really believe in unprecedented developments?
– Certainly, it is just a political trick, by which they try to consolidate the electorate, form a new electorate and broaden it. This is a political trick; I think any political side treating dialogue seriously should realize that dialogue’s meaning is deeper, and much more serious issues, than a certain slogan arising out of the current political situation, can be discussed during a dialogue.
– Now some analysts say that today ANC and the coalition are more like-minded, than any other political force inside the coalition, is it a joke or is it seriously the case?
– I don’t know what the people who make such analyses mean. Generally like-mindedness on every issue never happens. Certainly, there may be issues, on which ANC and the authority are like-minded. There are different parties inside the coalition that take different positions on different issues, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have a common viewpoint on the basic issues. At the end of the day, the clash of different positions is what leads to the truth.
– During the eight-day sit-down strikes and rallies of ANC a notion was expressed that we don’t have a mature civil society today, if it had existed, more people would have been in the square. Do we really have no civil society or people just don’t like politics anymore?
– I think we certainly have a civil society, but there is no certain point of time for civil society to say that from that moment on we have it, and from another moment on we don’t. In every country, including Armenia, the civil society formation is in progress. It is a different matter how active our civil society is. I think if we examined, we would find out that our civil society was becoming more active.