Will Vanetsyan's Colleagues Resign Their Mandates? 'Hraparak'

‘Hraparak’ newspaper writes that following the resignation of MP Artur Vanetsyan from his mandate, a significant portion of the public is demanding that other parliament members also resign their mandates, as the opposition no longer has a role in the National Assembly and the question of removing Nikol Pashinyan will not be resolved in parliament. However, the ‘Hayastan’ alliance remains hopeful that in September, they will be able to initiate a motion of no-confidence against the Prime Minister, at which point the mandates may be needed.

We inquired with Seyran Ohanyan, the head of the ‘Hayastan’ group in parliament, whether Vanetsyan’s decision was expected and whether he had informed them in advance. Ohanyan stated, “Artur Vanetsyan called me before resigning his mandate to inform me and thank me for our joint work, especially for our cooperation in the National Assembly as opposition factions. He also mentioned that despite resigning his mandate, he will still be part of our movement, and I value our collaboration both in the National Assembly and throughout this resistance movement.”

When asked whether there are discussions within the ‘Hayastan’ alliance about resigning mandates and how he feels about that, Ohanyan replied that there has been no such discussion in their alliance. “We present our activities today in a way that we are in the National Assembly with our own agenda, while the agenda of our country today is the resistance movement, which should not allow our authorities to blindly pursue a deceptive peace. In other words, the people today demand to be in the streets, and we are in the streets today,” said the group leader.

We also tried to get comments from other members of Vanetsyan’s ‘Pativ Unem’ group, but each of them was busy elsewhere. Hayk Mamijanyan is in Strasbourg participating in a PACE session, Tigran Abrahamyan is in Artsakh, and Taguhi Tovmasyan has gone to her native Vardenis to make “more effective decisions” as she mentioned on her page. She has not yet decided and did not answer our calls all day yesterday, so we don’t know if she intends to follow the example of the group leader and resign her mandate or continue her parliamentary activities as chair of the Human Rights Protection Committee.

It should be noted that Taguhi Tovmasyan passed into the previous parliament through the ‘Civil Contract’ party and has joined this parliament from the ‘Pativ Unem’ alliance via Artur Vanetsyan’s ‘Hayrenik’ party quota. We were informed that she is more in favor of resigning her mandate but has been urged not to do so. The other members of the group currently have no intention of resigning their mandates and are not discussing this issue. Vanetsyan has left it up to each person to make their own decision.

And if the Republican Party component of the alliance remains, and Hayk Mamijanyan becomes the group leader, as we have been informed, it would mean that Serzh Sargsyan will have his 7-person faction in parliament in the coming years, which entered under the name ‘Pativ Unem’ through the efforts and face of Artur Vanetsyan.

For more details, see today’s issue of the newspaper.