“I will not attach my life to one incident. 10 years have passed after that. So, the incident was certainly a disgraceful story, but I don’t think that that incident should play any role in my relationship with a certain official today, who held a certain office at the time,” Hayk Babukhanyan, the leader of the Constitutional Rights Union (CRU) who is in the 19th place on the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) list for proportional representation, said, in response to a question of www.aravot.am how he imagined work with Hovik Abrahamyan, who was in the second place on the RPA list for proportional representation and whom he had blamed for attempting to murder him in Artashat at the time. He also added, “No direct accusation was expressed by me personally against Hovik Abrahamyan personally. I blamed the establishment generally, who allowed that incident to take place. Basically there was a trial and the perpetrators were revealed etc., there is a ruling of the court.”
Let us remind that on February 4, 2003, during the presidential election campaign, Hayk Babukhanyan, the leader of the CRU, was stabbed in the town of Artashat, region of Ararat, during a rally in the framework of the election campaign of Constitutional Rights Union presidential candidate Aram Karapetyan. Hrayr Khachatryan, the head of the regional office of Aram Karapetyan’s election headquarters, said to journalists that the riots and fight had been organized by one of the members of President Kocharyan’s entourage, Minister of Territorial Administration Hovik Abrahamyan’s people. Khachatryan added that he had been born in Artashat and knew everyone and could name the people with criminal past who had participated in the incident.
“I said then and I say now that yes, Robert Kocharyan’s administration should have allowed all forces to conduct an election campaign, during which everyone’s security would have been guaranteed. All possibilities for conducting an electoral campaign democratically should have been at the president’s disposal. It wasn’t the case. We fought for democracy, for our national identity and goals. That struggle continues today and in order to continue that struggle today, we have chosen this option,” said Hayk Babukhanyan.
In response to an observation of www.aravot.am whether one could note after so many years that Hovik Abrahamyan had also been a victim of Robert Kocharyan’s rule, Mr. Babukhanyan said, “I don’t want to call our political and state figures victims. And generally I wouldn’t use the word ‘victim’ in this case at all. There was one president in the country at the time and that president pursued his policy. Now, there is another president in the country and he pursues his policy. We mainly opposed Robert Kocharyan’s policy, but we support Serzh Sargsyan’s policy, since it is obvious in which direction that policy is pursued today.”
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Nelly GRIGORYAN
