In response to the question what the task of the defeated opposition members will be in upcoming years, politician Stepan Grigoryan answered: “I do not want to curse… they must leave politics”.
“They placed an order, formed blocs, said that they were fighting, entered the arena, and did not fight, and in this case, their main task must be to leave politics”, he added. According to Stepan Grigoryan, there were at least three opportunities during the campaign to enforce the political struggle. First, the death of the “Bread supplier”, Samvel Babayan’s arrest, and the publication of the famous recording of the headmasters collecting votes for the Republican Party of Armenia. “Better to leave the arena, we have brilliant young people, and quite smart elders, let them enter the arena. This must be their main function”, said the politician. To another question whether we have opposition or not, that many people believe that there is no opposition, only projects, the politician said, that he would not accuse anyone, and would leave everything on everyone’s conscience.
Yet, he believes that “Yelq” bloc and “Tsarukyan” alliance will bring out the issues in the parliament. Stepan Grigoryan blames the opposition as well for the current situation, since they did not rebel against the ranked version presented by the government. “Members of the “Armenian National Congress” got tired of praising this Electoral Code. I wonder why they applied to the Constitutional Court. They were claiming during the campaign that it would be much better one, there would be no ballot stuffing, the lists were cleaned, cameras were set. Aram Manukyan said that there would be 300 thousand less voters… but it turned out that there were even more voters. This means that they legitimized the process”. In fact, the most pro-Western force in the new parliament, according to him, are the Republicans. In general, according to him, the parliament will have no impact on Armenia’s foreign policy. The RPA is going to be the decider.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
