OPPOSITION ACTIVIST FIRED BY UN
By Ruben Meloyan
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
March 20 2007
An Armenian employee of the United Nations office in Yerevan claimed
on Tuesday to have been fired for his active involvement in a recently
formed opposition movement that launched a campaign of anti-government
demonstrations last month.
Aramazd Ghalamkarian, an information officer at the UN office, was
among a group of young Armenians who set up Aylentrank (Alternative)
movement together with some close associates of former President
Levon Ter-Petrosian late last year. Its stated aim is to not only
campaign for regime change but also present a pro-Western ideological
alternative to Armenia’s current leadership which it considers corrupt
and undemocratic.
Aylentrank has also formed a bloc called Impeachment to contest the
May 12 parliamentary elections. Ghalamkarian’s name is 15th on the
list of its election candidates.
Ghalamkarian told RFE/RL that he effectively lost his job on May 7,
two weeks after the first Aylentrank rally in Yerevan. He said UN
officials informed him that he has been put on leave of absence until
April 30, the expiry date of his current employment contract.
"It was decided that I must go on leave and after that will not have
my contract renewed," he said. "As a justification, they cited my
activities in Aylentrank. They said I breached some UN rules which
I think are somewhat ambiguous and can be interpreted in a different
way."
According to those rules, posted on a special election monitoring
website of the Armenian branch of Transparency International, U.N.
employees "shall conduct themselves at all times in a manner befitting
their status as international civil servants and shall not engage in
any activity that is incompatible with the proper discharge of their
duties." They can join a political party only if "membership does not
entail action, or an obligation to take action, by the staff member
contrary to staff regulation."
Ghalamkarian insisted that his UN superiors had never warned him
of consequences of his involvement with Aylentrank beforehand. "I
asked them to show me the limits of what I am allowed to do so that
I either don’t overstep them and remain a UN employee or consciously
resign from the UN," he said. "But I was not given such a choice."
In Ghalamkarian’s words, such a choice was given to two other local
UN staffers who were initially included on the electoral list of a
newly formed party which, unlike Aylentrank, is not in opposition
to President Robert Kocharian. He said they kept their jobs after
dropping out of the race.
The head of the UN representation in Armenia, Consuelo Vidal, and other
senior officials there could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.