THEY DO NOT CONSIDER TIGRAN KARAPETYAN AND ARTASHES GEGHAMYAN AS OPPOSITION

Lragir
Jan 24 2008
Armenia

Recently the Heritage Party has stated to provide some of its seats
in the election commissions to the presidential candidates Levon
Ter-Petrosyan and Vazgen Manukyan. In this connection, another
presidential candidate Tigran Karapetyan accused the Heritage Party
of discrimination because the Heritage Party refused to provide seats
to Tigran Karapetyan.

On January 24 the spokesman for the Heritage Party Hovsep Khurshudyan
commented on this at the Hayeli Club. First he said the Heritage
Party has the right to provide its seats in the election commissions
to other political forces. The Heritage Party decided to provide
those seats to the parties which were not elected to parliament
and cannot have representatives to the commission. "We have stated
that we will provide our seats to the opposition parties. Meanwhile,
Tigran Karapetyan has stated for a number of times that he is neither
opposition nor government, he is a centrist force, and I think he
should turn to other centrists for seats," Hovsep Khurshudyan says.

As to Tigran Karapetyan’s statements that the Heritage Party provides
the seats for money, Hovsep Khurshudyan says they did not react to
these statements but it does not mean that they ignore them. The
Heritage Party will react to them, and if necessity arises, they will
go to court to protect the reputation of their party.

As to the number of representatives to 1900 election commissions which
will be provided to Vazgen Manukyan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Member of
Parliament Zaruhi Postanjyan, Heritage Party, says most seats will be
provided to those forces. And the reason is that the Heritage Party
does not have enough members who took the special training course
for members of election commissions and have qualification required
by the law. The members of the Heritage Party say the three courses
held by the Central Electoral Commission were not enough for them,
and they requested an additional course but were refused.