This was roughly Ashot Manucharyan’s suggestion, in response to the Heritage Party legislative initiative
In the first half of November, the Heritage Party parliamentary faction proposed legislation, putting forward the Bill on Lustration in the National Assembly. Let us remind briefly that the bill provides for defining lustration legally, the continuity of that process and revelation of persons who worked for USSR State Security Commission, intelligence, counterintelligence and investigation bodies or worked or cooperated explicitly or secretly with secret services of other countries and firstly dismissing them, then preventing the possibility of their holding a high-ranking office. The bill has raised controversy.
Ashot Manucharyan, a member of the Karabakh Committee and an oppositionist, said in this regard during a conversation with “Aravot” that there are many other problems in our country more important than adopting the Law on Lustration, “It is one of the artificial, bellied issues. For the modernArmenia, where thousands of problems exist, it is just an issue artificially adopted. Perhaps it was important at a certain point in time. Exact solutions to those issues were proposed when they were burning, when we were in a transition period fromUSSRto the independentRepublicofArmenia, there were rather rational approaches without striking the system work an overwhelming blow. Today putting forward that issue is both an unnecessary abuse and an unnecessary discussion.
Today when 20 years have passed, one just has to apply to all countries and all secret service agents, asking to hand in their resignation from certain offices.”
According to Manucharyan, if the issue is considered from the perspective of urgency and the bill aims at preventingArmeniafrom foreign influence, today after 20 years since the dissolution of theSoviet Union, it is completely artificial to connect that issue with a certain country, not to mention the Soviet KGB. “Today one must apply to all people who worked for ‘Mossad’, for the US Central Intelligence Agency, the Russian Federation FSB and all other organizations, asking to file an application each, as I understood, to the respective commission of the National Assembly, asking to discharge them from the offices of minister, president, party leader etc., because they work as agents.”
In response to our observation whether perhaps the politician thought a lot of the Armenian officials, let alone agent holding a state office, Manucharyan responded, “I have described what would be sensible now, only if people know what they are talking about.”
Talking about this bill lately, another politician, Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP) member Gurgen Yeghiazaryan, former deputy chief of the Republic of Armenia State Department of National Security, indicated that adopting that bill amounts to treason. Ashot Manucharyan, however, was not so strict, “Treason has a very serious content. It is just ridiculous now.”
Seizing the opportunity of having a conversation with A. Manucharyan, we tried to also clarify what he thought about Armenian National Congress (ANC) leader Levon Ter-Petrossian’s sensational statement on possible cooperation between ANC and the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP). “Today there is confusion in analyses and approaches related to that statement. In my opinion, Levon Ter-Petrossian sent quite a different message and it was not an internal message, it was an external message to the main actors on the Armenian territory. One should inquire from Ter-Petrossian why he used the given subject, an application to PAP, as an artistic background for that message – it is related to his artistic taste”, said Manucharyan. As for the claims of some ANC member that the context of Ter Petrossian’s statement was only analysis, Ashot Manucharyan repeated that it had been a message to main foreign actors in our country. What was that message about, what was that message hinting at? In response to this clarifying question of ours, Manucharyan said, “I can say only one thing – in that regard the message was efficient.”
NAIRA MAMIKONYAN
