Author: Raffi Khondkarian

BY GAREN YEGPARIAN

Last weekend, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation of the Western US held its 52nd Convention. This meeting occurs every other year. It reviews and evaluates the organization’s activities of the preceding two years and adopts the outline of the next two year’s activities.

It had been 24 years since I had the honor of participating in this meeting as a delegate. I was representing Burbank’s ARF unit, named Aghpalian after the famous revolutionary, organizer, and minister of the first Armenian republic. The biggest and best change I noticed a quarter century on was the much larger percentage of women among both the delegates and those attending in an advisory/consultative capacity.

Since the ARF has always been more than just a political party, more than just a revolutionary group, more than just another Diasporan organization; since it has been a central ideological entity attracting the largest number of free thinking Armenians; since it therefore serves as the organizational focus for a family of associations/institutions/societies serving various of our nation’s needs; these groups were also represented and contributed to the discourse and analysis grounding the resolutions adopted to guide operations for the next two years.

This convention addressed a lot of internal organizational issues impacting and about all levels of the organization, even though this particular meeting’s scope was formally limited to local and regional issues, not worldwide Armenian ones. These naturally bubble up periodically in any organization, especially a political one such as the ARF. The discussions were passionate, but didn’t degenerate into meaningless exchanges as can sometimes happen. The conclusions were also well reasoned and their wording took a lot of time to craft, requiring extensive efforts by the resolutions committee charged with the task.

Of course nothing is perfect. It was fascinating to observe how human nature played out. In a room full of almost 100 people, all largely in agreement about most issues, otherwise small, even miniscule, differences of opinion and approach somehow came to loom large. Later, during central committee elections, things were also heated. But, that’s the nature of the beast known as elections, isn’t it? The result was positive, with a good mix of old and new, another small step forward for the organization. The other factor that made the whole convention difficult was the shortened time allotted to it since I had last participated. We confront so many challenges as a nation and community that a somewhat longer time frame must be considered.

Numerous resolutions were adopted, but the ones that stand out for me were those about Western Armenia, reaffirming a statement of demands crafted four years ago and renewed ever since, emphasizing the importance of all-encompassing (in terms of community organizations) April 24th activities, and raising the level of activity on the Azerbaijan front to address the massive anti-Armenian efforts of that country.

As the ARF in the U.S. west of the Mississippi river embarks on the next biennium of the ongoing journey of the Armenian nation’s life and struggles, the input, the participation, the support, and yes, even constructive criticism of all concerned is welcomed. Your engagement assures a better collective future for all of us Diasporans, homeland dwellers (including the scattered remnants in Western Armenia), and even nations and countries neighboring the Armenian highlands.

STRASBOURG—The Rules of Procedure, Immunities and Institutional Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) examined corruption reports during its summer session and determined that 14 assembly members had violated ethical standards by engaging in corrupt activities with Azerbaijan. Specifically, members had accepted gifts and other monetary bribes from the Azeri government to lobby on its behalf and present Azerbaijan in a positive light.

In a report published April 15, the Committee on Rules of Procedure stated that, “The allegations made and the facts supporting them are examined under four principal headings: (1) the various activities in  favour of Azerbaijan within PACE; (2) the exchange of gifts and different forms of benefits; (3) the influence of extra-institutional actors (lobbyists); and (4) money and other corruptive activities being used as a means of fostering Azerbaijan’s interests in PACE.”

Arpine Hovhannisyan, the deputy speaker of Armenian parliament and the head of the Armenian delegation to PACE, said the committee has sanctioned the parliamentarians who are mentioned in the reports — she explained that the group is comprised of both former and current PACE members. The sanctioned parliamentarians include Alain Destexhe, Luca Volontè, Agustín Conde, Karin Strenz, Elkhan Suleymanov, Göran Lindblad, Tadeusz Iwiński, among seven others.

“As I had explained earlier, the independent Investigative Body of PACE had presented its report on corruption processes in PACE at the spring sitting,” Hovhannisyan said. “The Rules of Procedure, Immunities and Institutional Affairs Committee immediately touched upon the report. The committee continued working over the reports during the summer session.”

The committee ruled that the 14 PACE members who were found to have breached the organization’s Code of Conduct should be deprived of the right to access Council of Europe and Parliamentary Assembly premises for life.

This was the third Rules Committee hearing concerning the conduct of individual members and served as a follow-up to the Investigation Body’s report. Two previous hearings took place April 25 and May 15, and the committee will continue its hearings of current and former PACE members at its next meeting.