{"id":62719,"date":"2011-02-04T16:18:08","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T12:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=62719"},"modified":"2011-02-04T16:18:08","modified_gmt":"2011-02-04T12:18:08","slug":"throwing-a-bone-to-the-people-to-keep-them-occupied-opinion-on-bicameral-parliament-in-armenia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/02\/04\/throwing-a-bone-to-the-people-to-keep-them-occupied-opinion-on-bicameral-parliament-in-armenia.html","title":{"rendered":"Throwing a Bone to the People to Keep them Occupied: Opinion on Bicameral Parliament in Armenia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I consider that simply gum, which they&#8217;ve thrown, to keep people occupied,&#8221; said principal of the Mkhitar Sebastatsy educational complex Ashot Bleyan, commenting on recent news that Armenia&#8217;s parliament will be split into two chambers.<\/p>\n<p>Recall, RA Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan in California last week had informed Armenian-Americans of RA President Serzh Sargsyan&#8217;s intention of creating a bicameral parliament, with the upper house \u2014 the Senate \u2014 including representatives from the Diaspora.<\/p>\n<p>According to Bleyan, the main issue before Armenians today is Armenia: &#8220;that limited liability company which the most average people founded in 1991 in order to solve specific problems.&#8221; The rest, said Bleyan, is not serious.<\/p>\n<p>Also present at the meeting, local daily Azg (&#8220;Nation&#8221;) editor Hakob Avetikyan considered the idea of having a two-house parliament not yet ripe. He recalled an attempt in the 70s to unite Diasporan Armenians \u2014 an issue which was raised again in Nov. 2010 during a convention in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<p>In Avetikyan&#8217;s opinion, this is the diaspora&#8217;s demand.<\/p>\n<p>During the debate, Bleyan noted that in a few years, &#8220;we&#8217;ll all be Diasporan Armenian,&#8221; referring to the large numbers of Armenians in Armenia who emigrate, because people don&#8217;t want to live in Armenia, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, he added, in 20 years of Armenia&#8217;s independence, Armenia-Diaspora relations were supposed to have transferred to schools, universities and other educational institutions, which, however, has not happened.<\/p>\n<p>According to Bleyan, if &#8220;our compatriots abroad&#8221; integrated very quickly to life in Armenia, participated in elections, and pulled their weight, we would be able to resolve Armenia-Diaspora relations.<\/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>RA Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan in California last week had informed Armenian-Americans of RA President Serzh Sargsyan&#8217;s intention of creating a&#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":62684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[15008,21195,16871,16863,21197,21196],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62719"}],"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=62719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}