On September 20, 2006, Hrant Khachatryan, the leader of the Constitutional Rights Union (CRU), resigned the office. Then the 17th congress of the party was convened. At the time the members of the CRU tried to solve the controversies between Hrant Khachatryan and Hayk Babukhanyan by electing Hrant Khachatryan the honorable leader and Hayk Babukhanyan the deputy chairman (de facto leader). Later on Hrant Khachatryan, seeing that he has no support in what formerly was his own party, stated that he left politics once and for all.
This controversy raised a lot of speculation. In May 2008, Hrant Khachatryan wrote, “The CRU was ready for the presidential election at the beginning of 2008, but the triumph of forgers and falsifiers is approaching.” By the way, the CRU led by Hrant Khachatryan endorsed Vazgen Manukyan in the 2008 presidential election. After that election he has not participated in political processes. He prefers to be engaged in science. “Hrant Khachatryan also has personal problems, in regard to which he has met with Serzh Sargsyan. He has come to me, proposing to ease the policy the newspaper pursued toward Serzh Sargsyan and Andranik Margaryan. His supporters demanded that we reported on oppositionists – in particular, Artur Baghdasaryan the work of the Rule of Law Party (RLP), Artashes Geghamyan’s speeches – less. I.e. they tried to take off a set of oppositionists from the pages of Iravunk. H. Galajyan and I had always thought that the party was opposition and couldn’t cut deals. However, it turned out afterwards – which was also expressed in the press – that meetings took place also for different reasons,” Iravunk newspaper communicated Hayk Babukhanyan’s words in the issue of February 9, 2007. In that day’s issue of the newspaper, the whole verbatim of Hayk Babukhanyan’s press conference was published. Now Hayk Babukhanyan is in the 19th place on the RPA list for proportional representation, although the person in the second place is the one whom he accused of organizing his knifing in Artashat.
In response to a question of www.aravot.am how he would comment on that fact, Hrant Khachatryan said that he tried to be unconcerned about that subject and said significantly, “The history is not my property.”
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In response to a question how would you comment on your appearing on the RPA list, since you had criticized Hrant Khachatryan for cutting a deal with Serzh Sargsyan at the time, Hayk Babukhanyan said over the phone, “You are mixing up something, perhaps you have read something incorrect.” In response to a request of www.aravot.am to clarify whether he had not blamed Hrant Khachatryan for cutting a deal with Serzh Sargsyan, he said, “No. For the moment, you have mixed something up. If you have any proof, we will talk.” In response to a question what Mr. Babukhanyan blamed him for then, he said, “Whatever we blamed or not blamed for, those are inner-party issues. Are you studying the history of the CRU? What you say happened 6 years ago – inner-party issues that were solved by the party. Now it is a matter of historians to examine.”
As for his appearance on the RPA list, Mr. Babukhanyan promised to comment on that during a meeting at the party office.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
