Epress.am News from Armenia
The response to Heritage Party leader Raffi Hovannisian’s hunger strike, subject to painful sarcasm with the same vocabulary by both the radical opposition press and members of the ruling authorities, comes from the same cabinet, said Democratic Liberal Party of Armenia (ADLA, or HRAK in Armenian) chair Edward Antinyan, speaking to journalists in Yerevan today.
“Regardless of whether I share Raffi Hovannisian’s political views or not, I went, I expressed my support to him and I signed the corresponding registry,” said Antinyan.
“The people will elect someone else if they find that [Armenian National Congress, HAK, leader] Levon Ter-Petrossian doesn’t satisfy their desires: especially those people who oblivious to themselves love Levon Ter-Petrossian, they will loathe [him] in the most vicious way. Many, many of his supporters say, let’s find someone convenient, get upset with him, know where we’re going,” said the ADLA party chair.
According to Antinyan, Ter-Petrossian cannot fulfill his function: to ensure the sole opposition in Armenia.
According to the other speaker at today’s press conference, National Democratic Alliance party leader Arshak Sadoyan, the process that Hovannisian is engaged in isn’t so promising. “I went, saw him, we talked, many things, but to tell the truth, I didn’t understand, I even tried to convince [him] that it’s meaningless, it won’t work, but the decision is his.”
Sadoyan regretfully noted the fact that the HAK leader hasn’t approached Hovannisian. “They, taking advantage of the occasion, went to Liberty Square, but Levon Ter-Petrossian didn’t even want to approach him.”
According to Sadoyan, this is explained by the fact that the HAK leader wants to appear to be the only one in everything.
Asked by a journalist to comment on reports that when he was in Liberty Square, people said inappropriate remarks to him, Sadoyan said no one said any such thing in front of him and he didn’t hear any such remarks.
“But I was there for half an hour, and you reserve the right to say such lies; I haven’t heard this. I was there for half an hour, by the way, Raffi had changed a lot, he had lost so much weight that at one point I thought, is it him or not? He approached, we kissed [cordially, on the cheek], we talked… we talked for a long time. When lies have become a method, when, specifically, deliberately and without any grounds, they try to discredit people and that is heard from such a high platform…
“Now they try to throw dirt at every step; you’re even ashamed to respond, that’s being done from Levon Ter-Petrossian and his supporters, the dirt has reached this level, that they say obvious lies connected with this incident, instead of saying, well, weren’t you ashamed, you didn’t approach Raffi, they say Sadoyan came, but he left, he fled, because they were offending him. See what level dirt,” he said.