Razmik Zohrabyan called Movses Shahverdyan “political beggar”
“Those are just hearsay and made-up stories. They say such things after 23 years and don’t put forward any arguments,” Razmik Zohrabyan, one of the founders of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), said during a conversation with www.aravot.am yesterday. Let us remind that Movses Shahverdyan, the Armenian Labor Socialist Party (ALSP) leader, claimed during a conversation with Aravot the day before that Ashot Navasardyan had just registered the RPA. The idea had not been his, and he threatened: “Yes, the Christian Democratic Party of Armenia (CDPA) and the RPA were established in Armenia on the order of an absolutely different person, at somebody else’s behest. Ashot Navasardyan and Azat Arshakyan were just the people who registered them.” As for on whose “order” and for which purpose the RPA and the CDPA were established, the name of the “project’s author,” and other details, Shahverdyan will make them public, “if the government doesn’t draw conclusions.”
Razmik Zohrabyan reminds that the RPA was established in 1990 by Ashot Navasardyan, and the commanders of the Independence Army were in the initiative group. “They separated from the Union for National Self-Determination (UNSD), and a new political force was established. No one could dictate to Ashot Navasardyan, because he had travelled a long road of political struggle since the 1960s. There were many people who advised him, but Navasardyan was an independent personality and couldn’t listen to anyone. I have been a member of the RPA since 1990; I had been Navasardyan’s childhood friend, school friend, and comrade-in-arms before that. Thus, I know those stories quite well.” Our interlocutor asserts that three political forces stemmed from the National United Party (UNP) – the UNSD whose break-up led to the establishment of the RPA and the CDPA. “I neither knew nor saw Movses Shahverdyan in Ashot’s inner circle at least before 1990. Perhaps, he was there; I don’t know him by sight, nor is he famous for his political activities on Armenia’s political stage. Since they criticize the government for everything these days; this is another mysterious, half-secret show, as if there was someone who directed…, no one directed. I think that this person is among political beggars, and since he has joined Raffi Hovhannisyan, he wants to attach importance to his person, to discredit the RPA, they want to put on a show of alternative inauguration. This will not succeed, and this message will not achieve its goal, because society knows quite well the road travelled and the actions taken by the RPA, as well as the CDPA, and the UNSD.”
As for the swearing-in ceremonies to take place on April 9 – Serzh Sargsyan’s in the Sports and Concert Complex, which the “elite of the nation” will attend, and Raffi Hovhannisyan’s in Freedom Square, where people will gather around him, Razmik Zohrabyan said: “Raffi has decided and states every day that he will be anointed second president; it is not in line with either the Constitution or the people’s wish. At the end of the day, the people are not those several thousand people that are gathered there. The people are those three million people who turned out for the election, a part of which voted for Raffi, and the majority of which
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voted for Serzh Sargsyan. There has been no such precedent in the world that an alternative person is anointed after a presidential election, not acknowledging the results of the election. There are movements that don’t agree; they become opposition. However, this is some newly invented Armenian version.” Nonetheless, Mr. Zohrabyan thinks that life will continue after the inauguration as usual, the government will deal with its problems, the opposition can easily continue its rallies, no one will prevent them, as it hasn’t happened before. “They have a right to freedom of speech, they have a right to all freedoms, and they exercise them. The police see to it that there are no riots. How many times did they rescue Raffi? Someone wanted to attack him, another one…; so the police are vigilant. In a democratic country, such things happen. If you have lost, if you don’t want to congratulate, mind your business!” Razmik Zohrabyan sticks to his former opinion that “Satanist sects are behind Hovhannisyan’s movement and direct it; they take anti-Christian actions.”
Given all this, Mr. Zohrabyan doesn’t think that the resource of negotiations or dialogue between Hovhannisyan and Sargsyan is exhausted. “The president said: ‘Let’s sit down and talk.’ He is an elected president; where else can he talk? Shall he talk in cafes? Raffi has made demands that are not realistic, because he says: ‘Give me half of the powers bestowed on the president by the Constitution – the National Security Service (NSS) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).’ He has made such demands, so that they are not met, and he remains a demander,” our interlocutor says, reminding that the “whole world” has congratulated Serzh Sargsyan, and Raffi “is the only one left.” “Even a country, where he was raised, was reared, acquired his ideology, then came to Armenia, even the president of that country, the US, congratulated Serzh Sargsyan. So what else do you want, Raffi Hovhannisyan?”
NELLY GRIGORYAN
