ARMENIAN MAJOR OPPOSITION PARTY ACCUSED OF COLLABORATING WITH AUTHORITIES
Haykakan Zhamanak, Yerevan
6 Mar 07, p 3
Heads of several local organizations of the People’s Party of
Armenia (PPA) have resigned alleging that the party’s leadership
is collaborating with the Armenian authorities. PPA council member
Ruzan Khachatryan has brushed away the allegations, saying they are
fabricated by the authorities to weaken the party’s positions. The
following is the text of report by Lusine Barseghyan in Armenian
newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak on 6 March headlined "Dissolved one
after another":
Resignations continue in the Peoples Party of Armenia [PPA]. In
addition to the resignations announced by the secretaries of the
local organizations of Garni, Jrvezh, Kamaris, Goghtn, Abovyan, the
secretaries of the local organizations of Hatis, Kaputan, Geghashen,
Kotayk, Nor Gyughi, Mayakovski, Katnaghbyur and Akunk announced their
resignations on Sunday [4 March]. The latter, as we learned yesterday
[5 March] from our sources in the PPA, have also dissolved their
offices. The PPA ranks complain about the position of their leader.
The series of resignations began after PPA Abovyan organization
secretary Smbat Yeghiazaryan’s resignation, who accused [PPA leader
Stepan] Demirchyan of collaborating with the authorities and playing
fake opposition. Yeghiazaryan, who resigned on 1 March, has been
dismissed from the party for gross conduct and disseminating false
accusations. However, the former fanatical PPA member is not in
a hurry to make public facts, he had promised he would. Following
the 1 March scandalous meeting of the Abovyan local organization,
Yeghiazaryan said that Demirchyan has been collaborating with the
authorities since September.
"If he [Yeghiazaryan] is saying that [Demirchyan] had been
collaborating [with the authorities] since September, what year is it
now and what month? Why was he silent for so long? If he has facts,
let him present them," PPA council member Ruzan Khachatryan said
yesterday. "This hullabaloo is inexplicable, and we don’t know where
it is coming from.
The party’s leadership tried to explain to the regular members of the
party at its council meeting yesterday that there is no collaboration
with the authorities, and that the PPA is not collapsing, and new
assessments were voiced, according to which, authorities are attempting
to "rip off" the party. This is what such assessments are based on:
in one of his TV interviews, [Armenian President] Robert Kocharyan
implied that if Demirchyan does not bring "tails" with him – meaning if
he does not form blocs with opposition parties – he will easily ensure
PPA’s entry to the National Assembly [parliament]. As it is known,
no opposing bloc was formed, and Demirchyan personally contributed
to it, no matter how hard he tries to deny it.
Now that Kocharyan’s scenario is becoming a reality and the PPA is to
get what it was promised, the authorities are pushing this game ahead
so that the PPA gets as few seats in parliament as possible. The
PPA bodies are dissolved, the ranks get weaker, and the trust in
the PPA is lost because of the accusations voiced against the party’s
leadership. It is easy to deal with the weakened PPA. If adding similar
statements made by the opposition, like the one that New Times Party
leader Aram Karapetyan made last weekend, then it is apparent that the
PPA is becoming more fragile. Karapetyan had promised to give the names
of the opposition parties that are collaborating with the authorities,
and the context of the statement indicated that Karapetyan’s remarks
applied to Demirchyan as well.
Ruzan Khachatryan says that this entire hullabaloo proves one thing:
everything is coming from one centre and is directed against the
PPA. Instead, Khachatryan says, we have to think how to coordinate
the opposition’s struggle.
"But some opposition members have launched false accusations, and it
seems very suspicious to us," she says.
P.S. The case of the PPA’s local organization of Garni comes to
prove that something is going on inside the party. Last Friday [2
March], the organization’s secretary, Vahe Babayan, told us that
he had resigned, and that he had called a meeting of the council,
during which, the office was dissolved and the facility was given to
the village authorities. "They only remember us once in four years,
ahead of elections. Fifty-one of our members were detained following
the April [2004] events, but they [the PPA leaders] did not come to
see how we were doing," Babayan said last Friday. However, Babayan said
yesterday that what he had said was an internal issue of the party. "I
had problems with the Abovyan organization. We will stay and fight."
It is quite possible that the Goghtn organization secretary too may
surrender to the party leadership today.