“Such assessments can be made only by a person who hasn’t read the bill we put forward, because we don’t require of that interim commission to reveal what happened on March 1 in the first place. Or to reveal the reasons for the events of March 1. The Nikoyan commission undertook that and notoriously failed to do that,” Levon Zurabyan, the leader of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) parliamentary group, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am talking about the assessments made by Seda Safaryan, a member of the former Fact-Finding Group, with regard to establishing a new commission on the March 1 case in the parliament.
Let us remind that Ms. Safaryan said: “…If the only goal of establishing a commission is to make political statements, one could have made political statements on March 2, 3 and consider grounded the fact that our statesmen were able to cause a huge risk, which led to ten deaths and many wounded. …It would be better, if the National Assembly used its leverage to compel the bodies conducting the respective investigation to make criminal and legal assessments of the March 1 case, an issue of punishing the guilty was raised, because the National Assembly is not entrusted with legal powers, anyway, and cannot prove anything, and it will always be the main issue, even if evidence is gathered.”
Levon Zurabyan reminds that the proposed commission will undertake the very task of examining the legality of law-enforcement bodies’ actions, which the Fact-Finding Group had something to do with: “However, the Fact-Finding Group undertook other tasks.”
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“I cannot say what aims the ANC pursues, but I can surely say that it doesn’t show an opposition attitude, because, yes, I notice passiveness with regard to certain issues, I see a tendency to give way. Whereas they provided certain proofs, they rigidly presented those facts to the press and to the public during their rallies, and they brought our attention to that issue toughly, but I haven’t noticed that toughness in their work style for the past year or more, I haven’t seen in the past year that those issues, questions they raised with the Fact-Finding Group after March 1, they worked with the Fact-Finding Group to reveal what was unknown, I don’t see them showing such willingness,” with regard to this observation of
Seda Safaryan, Levon Zurabyan said: “So she thinks that the ANC should continue helping Seda Safaryan in uncovering March 1. But what does Seda Safaryan do, what status does she have in that issue that we should help her? The ANC knows what must be done to retain the March 1 issue on the agenda of our political and social life. We apply to all possible organizations for that – we try to raise the issue in the National Assembly; we apply to the PACE, the EU. So we take every opportunity to succeed in revealing those responsible for the crime. Moreover, if there is someone who demands solving the March 1 case, that someone is the ANC, and we proved that at the discussions in the National Assembly state and legal affairs committee yesterday.”
Nelly GRIGORYAN
