Today the Civilitas Foundation organized a discussion with Alexander Arzumanyan, a former member of the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANC) and presently a member of the Free Democrats Party.
“I haven’t been a member of the Armenian National Congress (ANC)”, explained he during the discussion. “When the ANC was established, I was in the Yerevan-Kentron Correctional Institution and I welcomed it. I welcomed the establishment of the ANC as a prisoner of conscience. Certainly, that was a new stage in the movement. I was Levon Ter-Petrossian’s campaign manager, I organized the pre-election work and I think that the headquarters worked well, we think we won. After that, the movement leadership decided to choose a new format. There were controversies, we were for freethinking ideology, we thought it wasn’t represented in the opposition camp and decided to fill that gap.”
Alexander Arzumanyan mentioned that labeling each other is characteristic of the pre-election period, therefore, in response to the question whether there would be labels like client, project etc., he said, “There already are labels, I don’t think that labeling is appropriate for a normal citizen, we have heard that politics is an immoral business, but we conceal our personal immorality by that. The fact that we are labeled shows that they dread us; they direct it not at the authoritarian regime, but at like-minded people, with whom they have been friends for 20 years. I think it is not efficient, the time will come and those technologists who give advice will realize that. We will not criticize any action of the opposition camp. We need no fight with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) or the ANC; what we need is to be responsible for our votes.”
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Hripsime JEBEJYAN
