Friday, June 20 2014

 The opposition has managed to break the situation when the authorities used to force any odious decision in the parliament without any obstacle, the head of the Armenian National Congress parliamentary faction, Levon Zurabyan, told Arminfo correspondent. 

To recall, on 18 June the non-coalition parliamentary factions - ANC, PAP, Heritage, ARFD and Orinats Yerkir refused to register themselves and torpedoed opening of the extraordinary session of the parliament. The ruling  RPA did not manage to gather 66 deputies for quorum. 

Zurabyan said that the incident is a sign of the growing influence of the opposition. "This is evidence of the consolidation process between the non-power parliamentary forces that started two years ago and today gives results. Until recently the authorities had an absolutely controlled parliament, ready at any moment to adopt any bills of the government. There was no discussion and pluralism of viewpoints. We have managed to break the situation.  Today the opposition is consolidated as never before, it uses effective ways of fight and all the available levers to overcome personalism of the authorities. The latter are less confident in their actions. I think that pressing by the opposition will go on growing", - Zurabyan said. 

He also added that the key purpose of the "four" is creation of a wide public consolidation against the incumbent power and attraction of great masses of population in this protest. <We think that the parliamentary four should become the main driving force in mobilization. Certainly, the four forces of this political union have different approaches, ideology and methodology. For instance, we are for more radical actions - organization of the wide people's pressure upon the authorities and making them tender their resignation, as well as holding of extraordinary parliamentary and presidential elections. But there are forces within the "four" which are for softer ways and for gradual power change. These forces are not ready to put such radical demands. And at present Armenian National Congress is in front of a dilemma - to conduct the radical process, which is dangerous, as the authorities may isolate us, or to delay these radical demands for some period of time, so that later to implement our idea through the wider consolidation and stronger guarantees. In this dilemma we still are for consolidation with the rest forces of the "four", - Zurabyan said. 

However, this does not mean that Armenian National Congress refuses its strategy and demands. "Serzh Sargsyan's resignation still remains on our agenda. But on the other hand, we have been creating a parallel political agenda together with our colleagues from the "four", - he concluded.