PRIME MINISTER HEADS GOVERNMENT COMMISSION SET UP TO ORGANIZE FUNERAL OF VAHAN HOVANNESIAN
YEREVAN, December 29. / ARKA /. Armenian Prime Minister Hovik
Abrahamyan is heading a government commission set up to organize
the funeral of a prominent Armenian politician Vahan Hovannesian,
who passed away Sunday after a long illness at 58. Vahan Hovannesian
was a long-time member of the Bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation/ Dashnaktsutyun party.
Vahan Hovannesian was born on August 16, 1956 in Yerevan. He graduated
with degrees in history and archaeology from the Moscow Pedagogical
Institute in 1978 and received his Pd.D in history. From 1978-1980
he served in the Soviet army.
>From 1980 to 1989 he worked as a research assistant and later as a
head of the scientific research division in the Erebuni Museum. In
1989 he worked as a research assistant in the Institute of Archaeology
and Ethnography under the Academy of Sciences.
>From 1990 to 1992 he was an active member of the Artsakh liberation
movement. From 1990 to 1992 he was a member of the ARF Central
Committee of Armenia, becoming one of the first leaders of the
organization in Armenia when it resurfaced during the latter days
of the Soviet Union. In 1992 he became a member of the ARF Bureau,
but in 1994 he was arrested after then president Levon Ter-Petrosian
started a campaign of persecution against the ARF and shut down the
party’s activities in the homeland.
After Ter-Petrosian’s resignation in 1997, Hovanessian served as
adviser to Armenia’s new president Robert Kocharian and headed the
Commission on issues of Local Self-Government until 1999. In 1999, he
was elected a member of Armenia’s Parliament, becoming chairman of the
Parliamentary Committee on Defense and National Security and Internal
Affairs, and served until 2003 in the ARF’s parliamentary caucus.
On May 25, 2003 he was reelected by the proportional system from
the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and elected Vice-President of
the National Assembly on June 12. He was also a member of both the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation Faction and its bureau. On May
12, 2007 he was elected as a deputy of the National Assembly by the
proportional system from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.
On June 7, 2007 he was elected Vice-President of the National Assembly
and on February 28, 2008 he resigned, after the ARF left the governing
coalition in objection to the state’s plans to sign the Armenia-Turkey
Protocols. On December 28, 2013, Hovannesian was appointed as Armenia’s
Ambassador to Germany.-0-