COMMITTEE ASKS FOR TIME
Hayots Ashkhar Daily
21 Oct 2008
Armenia
Within the frameworks of its regular four-day session, the National
Assembly yesterday started a discussion over the legislative initiative
on extending the term of the activities of the Interim Committee for
2 months. The legislative initiative was proposed by Samvel Nikoyan,
Artashes Shahbazyan, Artsvik Minasyan and Hovhannes Margaryan.
The authors of the initiative proposed that the deadline of the
activities of the "NA Interim Committee Investigating the March 1-2
Incidents and Their Causes" be extended till the 25th of December,
instead of the 25th of October, as decided previously.
The representatives of "Heritage" faction unanimously voted against
the proposal since they had had distrust in the committee’s impartial
work from the outset. And the reason of their distrust is that
the committee wasn’t set up in accordance with the "prescription"
proposed by faction. Below we present some pros and cons regarding
the subject matter of the discussion.
ARMEN MARTIROSYAN
"Heritage" faction
"Having no doubt as to the honest goals and motives of my colleagues,
I must say that society would have trusted the committee’s work if the
opposition had been represented there as well. But we passed a bill
of such a decision that didn’t give the opposition the opportunity
to have a full participation in those activities.
Second, trust in the committee depends not only upon the activities of
the individuals who are involved in the committe, but also upon those
people who are invited as specialists, experts or eye-witnesses with
the purpose of making certain clarifications. In this respect, what
was the value of the well-known ‘story of piglets’, as represented
by chief forensic doctor Shota Vardanyan"?
The committee does not have enough competences to really disclose
the full picture of what happened both in terms the cause-effect
relationship and the events proper. Neither is it competent enough to
take any measures to prevent their repetition. In such conditions,
Mr. Nokoyan cannot act beyond the framework of the competences
prescribed by the draft decision, no matter how much he may try to
work day and night. It is impossible to obtain the true picture of
the events with such limited competences.
ARTSVIK MINASYAN
ARFD faction
"The bill provides a solution to a very simple problem. That is, to
give the Interim Committee the opportunity to have a more detailed
discussion over the issues and find solutions to them. As well as
enable the radical opposition to participate in the activities of
the fact-finding group and introduce the available information. But
unfortunately, they are either reluctant to do so, or they introduce
that information par t by part.
Some of our colleagues accuse the National Assembly of imposing a
state of emergency. But could we have allowed the death of a couple
of hundreds of more people, so as society would have asked at the
end why the tragedy was not averted in time. Was this what was
necessary to do? Certainly not. After all, the people who resorted
to violence should be held accountable, no matter weather those acts
were directed against the police, the citizens or Armen Martirosyan,
our colleague. Whereas no one has so far given a testimony as to who
stabbed Armen Martirosyan with a knife.