Raffi Hovhannisyan, the Heritage Party leader, clarified, in response to a question of www.aravot.am what was the reason for the ANC to deny his proposal to have a common candidate in 41 electoral districts, that first of all, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) didn’t refuse to meet and discuss the issue, but it had just preferred to meet after registrations and the ANC had met with great pleasure, but had denied their proposal, whereas the Heritage Party had been ready to endorse 21 of their candidates and they 7, “I cannot tell you the reasons, I can only say that we are entering a responsible stage now. I am convinced that there will be reasons, excuses, but the fact is very obvious and that fact will remain in the whole history of the opposition. I hope that there will be revisions this week.”
Since Hmayak Hovhannisyan had talked about ambitions in his speech at the Union of Political scientists, we tried to find out whether the ANC had denied the offer given those same ambitions, to which he responded, “I said that it was quite natural that every political force has its ambitions, everyone has them. I don’t say that one or two have those, this is an issue, a very ordinary, very practical and very conventional idea, which is basically the expectation and the demand of an ordinary citizen of Armenia. He demands that. When I, for instance, go to work and meet my fellow citizens, 8 out of 10 say that – i.e. when there will be a common approach. Let everyone defend its identity, its diversity, but at least here the opposition has to be united. It will be great pain for me, if there is no revision, this decision remains as final and we will not be fair to our people yet another time.”
Those included in the Heritage Party list for proportional representation will sign a document called Oath to the New Armenia tomorrow and will agree on the principles of internal democracy and foreign policy put forward by Raffi Hovhannisyan. We inquired whether there was a lack of trust toward his teammates, since he had them sign a document. Mr. Hovhannisyan assured that there was no such thing. In response to our observation that it seemed like the coalition memorandum, they said they trusted each other, but they stipulated provisions on loyalty, Raffi Hovhannisyan said, “No, I think that this is the forerunner of the Heritage Party program that shows that however different our backgrounds both as members of a party and as representatives of the society and even intellectuals are, there is no controversy on these fundamental issues – democracy, national interest and state sovereignty. On the contrary, I would say that it is self-confidence rather than a lack of internal trust that our MPs – and I am very proud of that – are not necessarily in the first part of our list, but in the middle, because all of us, including them, will enter the parliament and we will also have executive work in the future.”
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Hripsime JEBEJYAN
