During a meeting with the Heritage faction today, John Prescott, the PACE co-rapporteur on Armenia, who is in Armenia on a two-day visit, according to Zaruhi Postanjyan who participated in that meeting, stated that he had come to Armenia to only examine the current situation and gather facts only in that regard and he refused to talk about the upcoming election, he also stated that he did not wish to talk about the details of the 2008 events, refusing to listen to the opposition MPs. “Certainly, we corrected him, saying that we were aware of his mission and mandate, as a co-rapporteur, and that his mission was related to broader issues than only today’s situation, because today’s situation is caused by yesterday’s situation and put forward a document about violence used by police forces recently against citizens of the Republic of Armenia, which was particularly related to using force and persecuting Vardges Gaspari and Lala Aslikyan, also to the case of Gevorg Hayrapetyan suspected of betraying the nation, we talked about the availability of judicial system”, presented Zaruhi Postanjyan. According to Stepan Safaryan, the Heritage representatives, none the less, handed over a letter to Prescott, which they wrote specifically for him. “Not only our arguments for switching to 100% proportional representation and its necessity for guaranteeing fair and equal rivalry of the upcoming election were put forward in that letter, but we also explained that it was the demand of the latest resolution adopted by PACE, it was also the wish of the Venice Commission and OSCE ODIHR, in order that the Election Code was also amended once. The Heritage Party gave all the documents, adding that its acceptance by PACE will contribute to reaching an agreement between the government and the opposition”, said Safaryan.
According to faction leader Stepan Safaryan, Prescott said that both in the report he was going to make and during his other meetings, in particular, with government representatives, he would say that during meetings with political forces he had witnessed an unprecedented concord among them in the context of switching to 100% proportional representation, but he would not express any position on his behalf. Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) representative Armen Rustamyan explained why it was necessary and what importance it had for restoring the public trust toward the upcoming election. In regard to “March 1”, Zaruhi Postanjyan and Stepan Safaryan put forward their assessment of the report made by the Special Investigation Service (SIS), stating that it had not answered questions that were still unanswered in any way and it could not prevent such events from repeating in the future and was the repeat of the petition filed in the National Assembly by the Attorney General of the Republic of Armenia on March 4, 2008, which was the first official decision made in regard to the March events and there was no necessity to make four pages of that petition 100 pages. “We also reminded that the revelations of the Fact-Gathering Group were more trusted by the public, than any other analyses made by the government circles. We also stated that the report was not able to solve the tasks assigned for it and had also tried to distort the evidence attained by the Fact-Gathering Group”, presented Safaryan, adding that Prescott did not have a particular wish to listen to them and had opposed, had refused to take the documents, but after PACE Secretariat representative Bas Klein had interfered, he had been compelled to take the documents given to him.
It is expected that the report of the PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia will be made before the parliamentary election in Armenia, supposedly in March.
Naira MAMIKONYAN
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