Today Vartan Oskanian, the former minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Armenia and the founder of the Civilitas Foundation, stated that rumors that he cooperated with the Prosperous Armenia Party were not groundless and although he hadn’t decided to be included in the PAP list yet, because “there is still time left to make the final decision,” but he didn’t rule out that the “internal political processes” might make him accelerate that decision. Stepan Safaryan, talking about including Oskanian in the PAP list, at the request of Aravot.am, avoided commenting on that move, saying that he was not the one to assess it, voters should do that, and added, “It is his business and his right. No one can deprive him of participating in the political life of the Republic of Armenia and of the right to choose the form of it.” Oskanian expressed an idea in his statement that all those forces that supported the position of switching to 100% proportional representation at the parliament, “had better not waste time after the upcoming parliamentary hearings on this issue and turn this common position into a civic movement, focusing on holding fair elections, not ruling out even cooperation between those forces during the parliamentary election in May.”
Taking into account this statement of Oskanian and also the fact that PAP had joined the offer of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and Heritage factions to organize parliamentary hearings on switching to 100% proportional representation at the parliament, we asked Stepan Safaryan whether Robert Kocharyan’s ears were not seen behind all this and whether he wasn’t concerned that the Heritage Party could unwillingly help, for example, the forces supporting Robert Kocharyan try to pull chestnuts out of the fire by means of the Heritage Party. “If the positions of the third, fourth or fifth sides coincide with the Heritage Party agenda, I don’t see any problem here. Let me give a very vulgar example – if the establishment needs to exaggerate numbers of the census and show numbers they want and if my breathing in and out contributes to that, it doesn’t mean that I have to stop breathing as opposed to them. Therefore, I have no such concerns. The Heritage Party has its political agenda and will be guided by that agenda. I don’t care much who and for what reasons those issues are raised. I want to neither deny, nor confirm or pay attention to those discussions, nor else to rule it out. It is much more important that rules of the game in the election process do not create unequal conditions for everyone. The Heritage Party notices that the other forces have similar interest in this issue. As for contributing to Kocharyan’s return in the future, the Heritage Party has said and repeats that no ex-president can help but hide behind our party, so the Heritage Party is not and won’t be a force serving any ex-president. If we know which our political line is and we don’t wish to deviate from that line, so we shouldn’t have any concerns and we don’t”, stated Stepan Safaryan.
