Suren Sirunyan, the chief of the bodyguard of former Minister of Internal Affairs Vano Siradeghyan, a prisoner of conscience convicted to imprisonment during “the case of seven” regarding the events that took place on March 1, 2008, and released in 2009 as a result of the amnesty declared by the National Assembly, who, in his words, doesn’t care for the Armenian National Congress (ANC) and doesn’t want to care, said during a conversation with “Aravot” that he regretted neither his participation in the National Movement during the 2008 presidential election, nor his sufferings. However, he regrets one thing, “It turned out that we were not struggling for what we thought we were struggling. I mean the goal was to establish constitutional order in the country through the election, but it wasn’t achieved. Let them (the Armenian National Congress) look for the guilty among themselves. I was in the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM) in the meantime and participated in those processes on behalf of PANM, I fulfilled all the orders given to me with dignity and integrity. I don’t regret that, but I regret the situation that occurred afterwards.”
Do you think that ANC or the National Movement at the time could have achieved a change of power in 2008? “Certainly”, was convinced Sirunyan and responding to our “then what was its mistake” question, said, “I had better not answer that question. All of them know quite well what their mistakes were.” Do you want to say that there was an opportunity and they let it slip? “Certainly. The moment for forming the government was clear. If they would go for a dialogue with the establishment today, it could have been done then too, to sit around a table”, said the former PANM member.
He didn’t agree with our observation that there had been obstacles in the way of negotiating with the establishment then, i.e. the existence of prisoners of conscience. “There had been no prisoners of conscience before there were prisoners of conscience. They could have started negotiations with that very establishment before March 1? If they are not against negotiating, dialoguing with the government in principle, they should have done it before March 1, March 1 wouldn’t have occurred in that case either, we wouldn’t have looked for who killed whom, who was released by whose mediation, who cut a ‘treacherous’ deal with which representative of the establishment… They should have done it then, perhaps it would have been better”, said Suren Sirunyan.
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