Is convinced Artashes Shahbazyan, the secretary of the National Assembly (NA) faction of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF)
– It looks like the seeming peace has been restored in the domestic political life; it turns out that whenever the Armenian National Congress (ANC) take away the tents and do not organize rallies, other political forces don’t even try to use that vacant square and organize rallies in their turn; don’t you see that you have given up the politics and wait your hands folded for ANC to make their move?
– And why do you think that the so-called political processes are only the square and we have nothing to do, but to care for ANC problems?
– Then why aren’t the other opposition forces that active?
– There is a notion that this country has changed through rallies, and a common delusion that if there is a rally, there is a political process, if there is no rally, there is no political process. They are used to that, because their activities are generally public, but it doesn’t mean there is nothing else, does it? Aren’t there internal processes? There certainly are. It seems that everybody is gradually preparing for the election: new forces emerge; there are signs of new unions; at the end of the day, it is not clear in what format the coalition forces will participate in the election. One may say that there aren’t final clarifications on many issues, but now, under these circumstances, it is not a right thing to say that there is no process; I myself don’t agree to that point of view.
– In what deep processes is Dashnaktsutyun itself engaged? With whom do you negotiate to participate together or separately in the upcoming election?
– Although I am not a member of the Supreme Council and I don’t have the whole information, but, I think that there are no such discussions going on at the moment. Usually we ran for the elections separately; we preferred that, I believe, if I am not mistaken, the general desire was that. However, those are political processes and it is not ruled out that Dashnaktsutyun may become a part of some unions, if there are such national and positive forces. In any case, we want to cooperate in one thing, i.e. our movement for protecting the right to vote, about which we have already stated. Events certainly take place, so far more in the regions, not only in Yerevan; there is a task to generally present and form sentiments. Along with this, preparation work is also carried out; we have been constantly participating in ideological and political projects etc.
– There are rumors that after some interviews with Robert Kocharyan, Dashnaktsutyun-Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP)-Kocharyan union will be established; do you think it is possible that such a union will be established before the parliamentary election?
– We have answered this question many times, we have made many explanations. There was only a notion that Robert Kocharyan will enter for the political processes, and political force never makes a decision based on such ambiguous viewpoints. We have cooperated in previous cases, because there were projects put forward, if there is cooperation with certain force, it will be in projects, in the case of resemblance between our projects.
– During a rally Levon Ter-Petrossian said that Dashnaktsutyun will never support R. Kocharyan, because they understand that doing such thing, they will share the responsibility for March 1 events; do you share this notion of the first president?
– The first president likes to speak the language of blackmail and provocation; we had an opportunity to say about this that we are not guided by his suggestions and his conclusions.
– So you don’t rule out that you will stand by Kocharyan’s side?
– There is no such issue here, when the issue is not discussed, and saying “yes” or “no” is not the right thing to do. Therefore I am not convincingly saying “no” right now; if I say so, you will suggest that the discussion on that issue has taken place. In the meantime no discussion has taken place, therefore neither “no”, nor “yes”.
– What do you think about dissolution of the coalition? Is it possible that PAP will drop out of the coalition at the threshold of the election or will be expelled from the coalition because of their claims to run for the election separately?
– So far PAP have explicitly said that they will run for the election separately and what we have seen testifies to rather opposition attitude. If they say that they will run for the election separately, then it is probably so. The Rule of Law Party (RLP) representative also said that they would run separately. Perhaps, in this case, the tactics will change.