Why Shouldn’t There be Businessmen in Parliament, Asks Republican MP

Republican Party of Armenia MP Vardan Ayvazyan doesn’t agree with the view that there shouldn’t be businessmen in Armenia’s National Assembly.

“Why shouldn’t there be lawmakers who are [also] businessmen? Those MPs elected on the party-list basis work quite well. Why shouldn’t a businessman be in parliament? It’s just that he shouldn’t earn those revenues through his position [as a MP],” he said, addressing opposition parties’ push for a 100% proportional representation system as they believe the majority seats are biased in favor of larger political groups and oligarchs.

According to Ayvazyan, all parties want to have businessmen on their party list, and in any case, eliminating the majority system altogether won’t exclude businessmen getting seats in parliament.

“Do you have a system by which you can tell a party who it should remove from its list? It will give the first, second place on its proportional list to businessmen. It’s not as if those MPs who got into parliament on the proportional list were buried in their work,” he said.

Note, out of 131 parliamentary seats, 41 are elected by majority ballot and 90 by party-list proportional representation. In Armenia, citizens vote for individual candidates on the majority ballot, but vote for political parties on the proportional ballot.

The Republican Party of Armenia MP was convinced that his party will preserve its leading position in the upcoming parliamentary elections.