WHEN EVERYONE SPEAK ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE
Kima Yeghiazaryan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on May 28, 2008
Armenia

The 30th General Meeting of Armenian Revolutionary Dashnaktsutyun
party, launched on May 21, continued its work in Tsakhkadsor and was
over yesterday.

Representative of ARFD bureau, re-elected Hrant Margaryan convened a
press conference yesterday to introduce the results of the five-days
discussions, the announcements made during the General Meeting and
the new staff of ARFD bureau.

Estimating the results of the 30th General Meeting the representative
of ARFD bureau underscored: "The meeting stressed the importance of
the indispensability of a very strong organization, fair Armenia and
national unity."

As regards the new staff of the bureau, there is some change here –
firstly it has been reduced from 13 to 11 people and secondly Ministers
belonging to Dashnaktsutyun party – Aghvan Vardanyan, David Lokyan
and Levon Lazarian have become members of the bureau.

"It was a surprise for everyone to see Ministers as members of the
bureau," H. Margaryan said and added that during the coming week the
Ministers will resign and new members of Dashnaktsutyun party will
replace them.

He also said Vardanyan, Lokyan and Lazarian resigned of their
own accord.

"It was a personal decision. It is not the decision of the General
Meeting. They feel great responsibility towards their membership to
the bureau and for them it is more important than the position of
a Minister.

That is why they preferred to resign from their positions to be able
to fulfill their responsibilities as members of the bureau."

He also said it is up to ARFD Armenian Supreme Body to decide who will
hold the positions of the Ministers of employment and social issues,
agriculture, education and science. In the days to come they will
announce the names.

As we know the press belonging to Armenian Pan National Movement
responded aggressively to Hrant Margaryan’s speech during the opening
ceremony of the 30th General Meeting. The announcements made by the
members of ARFD bureau were so vulnerable for the activists and leaders
of Armenian Pan National Movement that they have started their attack
with different insulting expressions in Hrant Margaryan’s address.

Touching upon this fact H. Margaryan said: " What we said in our
opening speech is an indispensability, because we were feeling this
atmosphere of fear from the press belonging to Armenian Pan National
Movement and no one wanted to tell the truth. We said the truth –
logical and grounded in an analytical manner and we didn’t insult
anyone. And naturally we will never descend to the level of similar
publications and will never respond to them."

Reminding about the agreement reached during the meeting between
ARFD and Levon Ter-Petrosyan in the Autumn of 2007, he appealed
to the authors of the publications to hoist from that level:
"I appeal to Armenian Pan National Movement to keep the rivalry on
ideological-political level as we have already decided. Let’s fulfill
our agreement and continue to criticize one another barely on the
ideological-political plane."

To the question if there has been any discussions regarding March 1

developments and if ARFD accuses anyone else except Levon Ter-Petrosyan
and his supporters for those events, Hrant Margaryan said: "We have
never accused only one side. We have always said that the atmosphere
that was created during the campaign was leading to confrontation and
we appealed many times to everyone to avoid it. In my view everyone
is responsible for what happened but our conscience is clear because
at least we did our best to avert it."