‘We would call Seyran Ohanyan and ask why you are throwing a bottle’: Alen Simonian talks about the brawls in the National Assembly

During the first eight months of the eighth convocation of the National Assembly, unprecedented incidents have been recorded, including bottle throwing, kicking, insults, cursing, removing a parliamentarian from the podium, forcibly expelling individuals from the hall, and brawls involving the assistants of the parliamentarians.

In an interview with Parliamentmonitoring.am, Chairman of the National Assembly and Acting President of Armenia Alen Simonian addressed these incidents, stating: ‘We could not avoid these phenomena because the pre-election period has been marked by much worse phenomena and much worse statements. The opposition and various opposition figures did not shy away from staging executions or from uttering personal insults and threats. Naturally, all the negative energy of street fights has come and been released in that small hall. It is natural that this tension has to be expressed somehow, and it does. I regret these incidents. Naturally, the public reacts negatively to this, and it is right to do so because they did not elect the parliamentarians for this. But I apologize, it was the leader of the opposition group who threw the bottle at the speaker, not the other way around.’

When asked whether it would be right to create an ethics commission to address these incidents, he responded: ‘In my opinion, that would change nothing. What, would we call Seyran Ohanyan to the Ethics Committee and ask him, if he disagrees with the speaker, why he is throwing a bottle at him? What would that change? Ethics should be internal. When people come to the National Assembly and try to justify their presence there with such actions instead of presenting legislative initiatives, what ethics committee? They come to defend their friends who, in their description, are politically persecuted, to say in front of them, ‘look, we are doing work here, we are fighting for you.’ What ethics are we talking about?’