OPPOSITION LEADER QUITS ARMENIAN PARLIAMENT
Tigran Avetisian
Armenialiberty.org
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Sept 7 2009
Armenia — Opposition leader Raffi Hovannisian.
Raffi Hovannisian, the leader of a major Armenian opposition party,
has decided to end his membership in the country’s parliament,
a senior party source said on Monday.
The source, who asked not to be identified, declined to comment on
reasons for the unexpected move, saying that Hovannisian himself
will explain his motives in the coming days. The spokesman for his
Zharangutyun (Heritage) party, Hovsep Khurshudian, refused to confirm
or refute the resignation.
A former U.S. citizen, Hovannisian, 50, relocated to Armenia from
California with his family in 1990 and served as the newly independent
country’s first foreign minister in 1992. He founded Zharangutyun in
2002 and remains its de facto top leader despite holding no formal
positions in the party leadership at present.
Zharangutyun won seven seats in Armenia’s 131-member National Assembly
in the last parliamentary elections held in May 2007. Hovannisian
tried unsuccessfully to earn his party an extra seat when he contested
an August 2007 repeat election in a single-mandate constituency in
central Armenia.
Zharangutyun chose to support former President Levon Ter-Petrosian
in the February 2008 presidential election after Hovannisian was
controversially disqualified from the race. The party has increasingly
distanced itself from Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress over
the past year. In an early July statement, Zharangutyun said it has
decided to act more independently in the political arena after failing
to get Armenia’s leading opposition forces to join forces.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
