Candidate for RPA Member Withdraws After Parliament Altercation

Candidate for RPA member Ruben Hakobyan has decided to withdraw his candidacy after today’s incident in the National Assembly. Hakobyan announced this during a press conference.

“For two days, the issue of the candidate for RPA member has been discussed in the committee, but during this time, there has been no substantive discussion on the agenda; instead, the topic has been politicized with specific emphasis on insults, curses, and accusations. I came to respond to those accusations, and the discussions over these two days have shown me that I need to withdraw my candidacy, thanking both factions. I do not know whether this was communicated, but I have withdrawn my candidacy, which was left incomplete due to several accusations and insults,” said Hakobyan.

It is recalled that Ruben Hakobyan’s candidacy for this position was nominated by the “Hayastan” faction.

Referring to the incident involving Petros Ghazaryan, Hakobyan noted that television has serious peculiarities. “The success of a televised debate depends on the stance taken by the interviewer; it is primarily required to remain neutral and not take sides. If I am not mistaken, that interview was in the summer of 2019, discussing the ‘March 1’ issue. Nikolay Baghdasaryan, a former deputy from the Civil Contract Party, also participated and stated that he agrees with Nikol Pashinyan that ‘March 1’ has been fully uncovered, and that the people know who organized those killings, mentioning Robert Kocharyan’s name. I asked how confident he was that this was the case, and he replied that legally it hasn’t been proven yet, but the people have that opinion,” Hakobyan recounted, explaining that Petros Ghazaryan not only did not interrupt but also nodded in approval, indicating that there is an opinion among the people that Nikol Pashinyan extorted money for writing or not writing articles, and even organized beatings to secure payments to prevent criminal cases from being opened, to which Petros Ghazaryan responded that they were discussing ‘March 1,’ not Nikol Pashinyan.

Hakobyan stated that at that moment the host was clearly biased and was inciting, and he was not presenting himself as a journalist at that time. Hakobyan noted that the RPA has sufficient levers to cleanse the Public Radio and Television of corruption.

He also reminded that Pashinyan once called Petros Ghazaryan ‘Natashka,’ which is known to symbolize certain connotations in Russian reality, yet he brought that same ‘Natashka’ back and expected the same behavior toward the opposition.