Epress.am News from Armenia
National Assembly deputy chair and Prosperous Armenia member Samvel Balasanyan sees nothing wrong in Prosperous Armenia (BHK) boycotting the first meeting of the first parliamentary session this year.
“There was one important bill we didn’t vote on [referring to the bill on banning cash transactions; anyway,] the bill wasn’t adopted. Our parliamentary faction discussed it and we came to the conclusion that this bill needs to become law, but it’s not the right time, so we didn’t vote,” he said at a press briefing today.
On the matter of lawmakers voting for absent colleagues, which was evident in Thursday’s meeting, Balasanyan was frank, saying that basically the card system isn’t justified.
He dubbed what happened in parliament yesterday a “show,” which was meaningless to organize.
At the same time, Balasanyan tried to justify his colleagues’ behavior, stressing that he has 13 years of experience working in parliament and knows that it’s likely that lawmakers will be absent during an election campaign period, since many are dealing with issues tied to the majority ballot and many are on business trips.
Galust Sahakyan, head of the Republican Party of Armenia’s parliamentary faction, in turn, commented on yesterday’s incident with the following: “The closer the elections get, the more the number of those armed with knives increases and the press get excited.”
He also ruled out the possibility that his colleagues might be voting for others, but this was recorded by not only reporters and camera operators covering parliamentary activities, but also the National Assembly’s own CCTV cameras.
In response, Sahakyan said he can neither refute not confirm this news.
“Because I’m not involved in investigation work as reporters are, I would simply advise reporters not to delve deep into these types of matters. It’s clearer than clear that those bills which were put to a vote recently were passed with the most votes in favor,” he said.