No Quorum But No Harakiri Either: National Assembly Chair Not Displeased with Parliament

A meeting at the National Assembly didn’t take place today due to lack of quorum — at 12 pm, there were only 39 deputies (out of 131) in the room. According to the Assembly’s rules of procedures, another meeting has to be called three hours later in order to determine whether there is quorum at that time.

Reporters asked parliamentary speaker Samvel Nikoyan whether this lack of quorum is a regular occurrence. To which Nikoyan responded, if the last four-day parliamentary sittings are observed, it can be noted that there have been more sittings than usual.

“During all the convocations, we always say ‘the previous one was better than this one; the next one will be better.’ I believe that, of course, we have to expect the next one will be better. But I personally am not disappointed with the convocation of this parliament, no matter the amount of criticism. And the National Assembly is for that, to be criticized; it’s a public body, but in these five years, the National Assembly, in my opinion, was able to fulfill its functions, and this is how we should approach the issue,” he said.

Asked which political parties will make it into the next convocation of parliament (following the May 6 election), the National Assembly chair naturally said those which the people elect.

“But never in all this time of my activities have I been guided by any forecasts, reading coffee grounds [tasseography] or fortune telling. But that the elections will be unprecedentedly dynamic for our country and also according to international standards, of this I am convinced,” he said.

He said he considers the parliamentary opposition’s work to be normal.

“Regardless of the fact that sometimes we might’ve been forced to raise our voices through a megaphone or reprimand [each other] and so on, this is an appropriate way of working in parliament. If we see what type of approaches there are in other parliaments, it gets to fights, altercations, insults — in some parliaments I’ve even seen that they’ve tried to use harakiri [Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment] on each other. No such thing happened in our parliament,” he said.