According to news spread by a newspaper today, already former members of the Union of Yerkrapah Volunteers informed that more than fifty members of the union had applied to chairman of the UYV Manvel Grigoryan to suspend their membership in “such a puppet organization.” The freedom fighters, according to the publication, explained their decision by “internal controversies” and did not participate in the 9th congress of the UYV that took place last week. The reason for internal controversies is that the UYV will endorse the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) in the upcoming parliamentary election and Serzh Sargsyan’s candidacy in the following presidential election, according to General Manvel Grigoryan’s statement.
During a conversation with Aravot.am, however, chairman of the UYV executive committee Manvel Grigoryan’s advisor Vardan Vardanyan denied the news, “There is no such thing, nobody left the UYV, no one has filed an application, no one has made a statement or boycotted the congress. 2045 delegates had been chosen to participate in the congress, 2041 out of them were present. However, it wasn’t like someone boycotted the congress, perhaps they were from distant regions and did not come for technical reasons.” He also observed that if there had been such a thing, there would have been the names of the members who had left, but there weren’t. “Is it possible that people would leave the UYV, remaining anonymous? No. No such thing has happened,” assured the advisor to General Manvel.
Talking about the statement of the UYV executive committee about endorsing President Serzh Sargsyan, on which the opposition representatives of the UYV, in particular, have already expressed their disagreement, stating that they are not going to endorse Serzh Sargsyan, Vardan Vardanyan said that the statement “is too exaggerated,” “Yes, they stated that they supported their comrade-in-arms, but it wasn’t said that they endorsed him in the election, there was nothing said about the RPA. If there had been a statement made about the RPA, could, for example, Artur Aghabekyan, who was elected a member of the executive committee and voted in favor of the statement, have voted in favor of it?”
Vardan Vardanyan said that yerkrapahs who had not been personally present at the congress and had been informed about that through others and had gotten wrong information had expressed their opinions on the statement.
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According to our interlocutor, the truth is that it was mentioned in the statement adopted at the UYV executive committee about the security of borders, youths’ military-patriotic upbringing and legal support for freedom fighters’ social problems and one passage was about supporting commander-in-chief of the armed forces President Serzh Sargsyan, “The main, the whole idea of this was to meet external challenges and not to endorse the RPA in the upcoming election or even Serzh Sargsyan in the presidential election. You cannot find any such line either in the statement or in Manvel Grigoryan’s speech. Furthermore, that statement was not caused by the election, the date of the congress just coincided with the pre-election period, because the previous congress took place in February 2010 and we had to convene the meeting two years later, this February.”
Let us remind that at the 9th congress of the UYV, chairman of that organization Manvel Grigoryan stated addressing President Serzh Sargsyan who was present at the meeting, “You are our comrade-in-arms and we trust you and support your initiatives to meet external challenges. We believe that you will not spare any effort to build a prosperous country.”
Naira MAMIKONYAN
