“I, the citizen of the Republic of Armenia, join the lawsuit against Levon Ter-Petrosyan, that in 1995 he falsifying the constitutional referendum took the power from the people.” In these days, the petition of such content is conducted among the citizens.
In the conversation with member of ANC Vahagn Khachatryan, Aravot.am inquired as to how he assesses the implementation of petition, and what steps they are going to undertake. Mr. Khachatryan replied: “The authority is looking for ways to divert people’s attention. Instead of giving answers to questions regarding offshore scandal, price rise, gas price, the authority is recalling stories to make people forget about those talks.” The statement, under which RA citizens must sign, states: “In 1995, pursuant to decision of RA National Assembly, the draft of the Constitution introducing the authoritarian state management system was put to referendum.
It contradicted democratic principles of checks and balances in the government, as well as Articles 1 and 2 of the Constitution, which are undeniable and unchangeable, which in spite of all illegitimacies remained unchanged. According to this draft, the entire management of the state is centralized in the hands of RA President and the majority of the National Assembly, to some extent. RA citizens were deprived of their right to initiate a referendum, which was stipulated by the Declaration of the Republic of Armenia, and in 1991 was prescribed in the form of the law and approved by the Supreme Council.” On this occasion, Mr. Khachatryan clarified: “Everything took place within the framework of legality, public, and within the framework of current legislation of that time. The authority does not have good expectations from September to the end of the year, plus the worsening of economic situation, deterioration of economic conditions in Russia, which will affect the economy of Armenia. This step is very typical of the authority, without its intervention, no one would demonstrate such initiative.”
The text of the statement also says: “The loss of faith towards the future resulted in enormous scale of emigration for us. The year following the seizure of the power, in 1996, a frank confession was made that even if 100% of citizens make another decision, we will not hand in the government. Until now, all elections and referendums have been held without fraud. 18 years have passed since those events, but so far no one has responded.” We asked V. Khachatryan why L. Ter-Petrosyan should bear the responsibility. He answered: “It is not by chance. In fact, L. Ter-Petrosyan is a unique person that can unite people around him to return the power to people, constitutionally. It was not also accidental of making Nagorno Karabakh reportage public, when they were trying to mitigate the role of Ter-Petrosyan in Nagorno Karabakh war, and to equate it to even zero. In all cases, the government has always tried to keep Levon Ter-Petrosyan in the shade, but they failed, especially in recent times. They are also trying to solve the issue of remaining in the history, which is failed, too.”
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Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
