“As you know, we have initiated a process of preparing a joint agenda regarding the presidential election and tried to achieve general agreement on this joint agenda. This program was neither against nor for anyone. What we tried to do was for the sake of the program. We haven’t talked yet about what political force agrees to what. However, it is natural that the incumbent president rejected, didn’t except some things completely,” Hrant Margaryan, a representative of the ARF Bureau, said during a meeting with journalists of Aravot, Radio Liberty and www.yerkir.am today, adding that they had had another series of meetings with political forces and the latest meeting had been with the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) and President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan.
Let us remind that the ARF discussed its seven-point agenda with the RPA and the President of the Republic of Armenia on Saturday. An arrangement was reached to continue discussions. There was no agreement on when the next meeting will take place. www.aravot.am asked Hrant Margaryan to clarify which points the president of the republic was against. Although no such clarifications had been made after consultations with the other forces, Margaryan deemed it right this time, “He said about the parliamentary system that the system didn’t determine whether the country was good or bad, and with regard to the Armenia-Turkey protocols, he said that his step had been the right one. Naturally, we had the opposite opinion, there was an exchange of thoughts, and this difference is not a novelty. We have met, talked many times particularly about the Armenia-Turkey relations and protocols. It has always been a subject of our conversations; there was nothing novel, nothing new was invented, so to speak, during that meeting.”
Let us remind that among other things, the ARF offers in its seven-point agenda to switch to a parliamentary system of government and to denounce the Armenia-Turkey protocols.
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Hrant Margaryan deemed necessary to clarify once again that the ARF aimed at one thing with its initiative, “To turn the presidential election into a struggle of programs, not personalities. So that we are able to politicize the atmosphere, put forward ideas, in order that people know that their future and the future of their children depends on what program one will try to implement in this country and not on personalities. I think that we have succeeded so far, not in the sense that we have been able to reach general like-mindedness, but we have been able to start a general conversation on that program, an exchange of thoughts, which is no doubt a positive thing.”
Nelly GRIGORYAN
