Is Liska an outlaw or is swearing at an MP in accordance with the law?
The Heritage Party made a statement yesterday, which mentioned in particular, “We were informed yesterday evening (March 29 – edit.) that the regional authorities of Syunik had put obstacles in the way of Zaruhi Postanjyan, an Armenian National Assembly member, who had left for Goris to establish a pre-election headquarters for the Heritage Party in the region of Syunik, and of activists of the Heritage Party Goris office.”
Thus, citizens, who had provided premises to establish a Heritage Party headquarters in Goris, asked to give the keys of the premises back to them after some pressure from the authorities and took off the Heritage Party logo, pinned up on the headquarters.
It is obvious that the mentioned citizens could have had no other reasons for not providing the premises, but the interference by the authorities. Zaruhi Postanjyan called Suren Khachatryan, the governor of Syunik included in the list of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), to get an explanation, but the governor, instead of giving explanation, swore at the National Assembly member.
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The Heritage Party strongly condemns the behavior of the governor of Syunik, as well as draws the attention of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) and the law-enforcement bodies to the above-mentioned fact and demands to guarantee equal pre-election conditions of competition for all political forces.”
During a conversation with www.aravot.am, in response to Aravot’s question whether there had been obstacles in other regions, besides the incident that had taken place in Goris, Gevorg Kalenchyan, the deputy manager of the Heritage Party and the Free Democrats Party common pre-election headquarters, said, “When we first wanted to open a headquarters, there was a minor obstacle in Yerevan, but it was quickly overcome – we have had no other problem and we hope that we will not have any.”
Gevorg Kalenchyan also said that he had no information on law-enforcers’ response to this warning of the Heritage Party.
We have decided to trail this warning. The Armenian police said in response to our question that the incident had taken place between two officials – a governor and a National Assembly member – therefore, the Armenian Special Investigation Service (SIS) had to deal with that case. As for preventing from opening a pre-election headquarters, they haven’t gotten an application about that. The SIS gave roughly the same answer. The SIS press secretary communicated to Aravot that no one had applied to the SIS in that regard, no statement had been received and neither any evidence had been gathered in that regard, nor, more so, a criminal case had been opened.
Seizing the opportunity, we inquired from representative of the Heritage Party pre-election headquarters Kalenchyan how many pre-election headquarters they had planned to have. “Probably we will have pre-election headquarters all over Armenia, including around 40 in the regions and also in all communities of Yerevan, from April 8 on.”
Kalenchyan said that they had no statistics regarding people involved in the work of pre-election offices, but “we will have at list one manager permanently present in each office that will also perform functions of a headquarter and as for the rest, we will see, it depends on involvement of the people.” According to the representative of the Heritage Party, the party, as during the past elections, will rely on volunteers this time too, since “our party has always worked mainly with volunteers. We will try to employ all our resources – those of the parties and of the social sector – to the highest extent.”
NAIRA MAMIKONYAN
