Armenian National Congress and Authorities Agreeing to Divvy Parliamentary Seats: Opposition MP

Head of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun, or ARF-D) parliamentary faction Vahan Hovhannisyan, in an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian service, said on Wednesday that the Armenian National Congress (HAK) has fallen into a trap.

“It’s thrown itself into the trap. This is already clear and it also appeared from other phenomena that this trap is already ready. On the other hand, of course, the authorities too are in a trap,” he said.

Prior to their meeting, HAK had said that the question of continuing the dialogue was dependent on the status of the HAK activists detained last week. However, after meeting with government representatives after making this statement, HAK didn’t make a decision on continuing the dialogue. Instead, the parties discussed the incident that took place between the HAK activists and police, agreeing to continue the discussion this Friday. The parties also agreed to refrain from speaking to the press or making comments regarding the details of their discussion, deciding to continue the meetings.

In the opposition MP’s opinion, everything is crystal clear: “the parties have no desire to resolve any issue apart from divvying up seats between them in the upcoming elections.”

“They are ready to be accommodating for everything — both to ‘torture’ their supporters [I say this in quotation marks because I don’t if it’s true or not] and to negotiate with non-legitimate MPs,” he said. “In such a picture, one should not be surprised that in one night they can diametrically change their point of view.”