BETWEEN FACT-FINDING AND COMMISSION

Lragir.am
15:43:44 – 23/10/2008

Member of Parliament Rafik Petrosyan, Republican, who was hosted
at the Pastark press club on October 23, said even if the study is
prolonged for four months, the ad-hoc commission to study March 1
will not be able to answer the questions "who shot", "who ordered",
"who is to blame for ten deaths". Petrosyan said if the special
investigative service cannot answer those questions, the March 1
commission will not be able to answer them at all because it lacks
both the intellectual capacity and authorization that it takes. By
saying intellectual capacity Rafik Petrosyan means the forensic
training in case of absence of which the commission will be unable
to collect the necessary facts and work with them.

In this sense, Rafik Petrosyan holds out hope regarding the
fact-finding group that will be set up, noting that the group will
be set on the basis of parity, i.e. equal representatives of the
opposition and the government, and one representative for the human
rights defender. According to Petrosyan, only parity will help carry
out non-tendentious work. Rafik Hovanisyan made an unexpected statement
that in any case the members of the ad-hoc parliamentary commission
representing the coalition are bound to the authorization of their
parties, meanwhile the representatives of the coalition have the
deciding vote because the opposition rejected participation. This is
what Rafik Petrosyan says. However, the reporters remarked that the
parliament gave the coalition the right to deciding vote, and the
opposition rejected participation because it had no voting rights.

In answer to this remark Rafik Petrosyan said it would be strange
if the parliamentary majority did not prevail in the parliamentary
commission. The reporters noted that consequently the fact-finding
group is an obligatory step because an unbalanced commission cannot
do balanced and effective work.

Rafik Petrosyan said he did not mean that, he only says that the
fact-finding group can work more effectively than the commission
because first there will be parity, then dominance of the opposition
because the representative of the human rights defender will be
the fifth member of the group. Besides, the fact-finding group is
going to be a group of specialists. All this allows Rafik Petrosyan
to state that the group may answer the question about the gunmen,
the instigators, those accountable for the killings.

Generally, it is obvious from Rafik Petrosyan’s answers that he does
not know what the fact-finding group is for if there was an ad-hoc
commission, or what the meaning of parity in the fact-finding group is
if as he says the commission is going to draw the final conclusions, in
which the representatives of the coalition hold the deciding vote. The
impression was that Rafik Petrosyan has heard that the government
may set up a fact-finding group, therefore he speaks positively about
what he has heard and underscores it as important and useful.