{"id":271037,"date":"2016-02-12T17:36:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T13:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=271037"},"modified":"2016-02-12T17:36:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T13:36:30","slug":"armenian-ruling-partys-ombudsman-candidate-approved-by-state-and-legal-affairs-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2016\/02\/12\/armenian-ruling-partys-ombudsman-candidate-approved-by-state-and-legal-affairs-committee.html","title":{"rendered":"Armenian Ruling Party&#8217;s Ombudsman Candidate Approved by State and Legal Affairs Committee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">The Armenian National Assembly&rsquo;s Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs voted 7 to 4 on Friday in favor of endorsing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2016\/02\/05\/armenian-opposition-forces-to-nominate-joint-ombudsman-candidate-press.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Arman Tatoyan<\/span><\/a>&#39;s candidacy for the position of the country&#39;s next human rights defender. Tatoyan, currently a deputy Justice Minister, was appointed for the position by the ruling Republican Party&#39;s (RPA) parliamentary faction. The National Assembly will vote on Tatoyan&#39;s candidacy in a secret ballot at a plenary session.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHeritage party NA faction leader Zaruhi Postanjyan, who was nominated for the post by independent lawmaker Edmon Marukyan, received 4 votes in favor.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAt the start of today&#39;s debate, Gagik Melikyan, the secretary of RPA&#39;s faction, asked Marukyan whether the Heritage party was aware that he had put forward Postanjyan for the Ombudsman&#39;s job. &ldquo;You want to make the faction&#39;s sole member a human rights defender, thus closing the faction. Do you want to deprive [Heritage party] of the chance to speak from the high podium of the parliament? I don&#39;t think it&#39;s right to dig another party&#39;s grave, and I don&#39;t want you, namely, to serve as a gravedigger,&rdquo; Melikyan said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;If there are any gravediggers in this country, then it&#39;s not us. I&#39;m entitled to discuss Heritage-related issues here; if Zaruhi Postanjyan was nominated, then she must have gotten her party&#39;s approval. As for &nbsp;the faction&#39;s closure, I&#39;m surprised it has caused RPA so much trouble,&rdquo; Marukyan replied.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tPostanjyan herself expressed confidence that she was qualified enough to carry out human rights activities: &ldquo;The Ombudsman is neither a midfielder nor a person with limited rights, and during my years practicing law I have even been subjected to political persecution,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRPA lawmaker Levon Martirosyan asked Postanjyan why she would puts forward her candidacy for job of Ombudsman when the parliamentary mandate provided more opportunities for protection of human rights: &ldquo;You want to decrease your status on multiple levels. You know full well that you will not be elected Ombudsman; even from an arithmetical point of view, your faction does not have enough members in the parliament to vote you through. It seems like once again you only need a microphone.&rdquo;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;I&#39;d prefer fighting rather than having some job. You&#39;re choosing your future Ombudsman, and you are free to follow your conscience. I just want the Republican Party to know that they&#39;ll always have a competitor. There should be competition on all platforms,&rdquo; Postanjyan replied.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Postanjyan herself expressed confidence that she was qualified enough to carry out human rights activities: \u201cThe Ombudsman is neither a midfielder nor a person with limited rights&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":271033,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}