HHK Spokesman: “Legitimacy can change”
After the September 9 rally of the opposition Armenian National Congress (HAK), Spokesman for the Republican Party of Armenian (HHK) Edward Sharmazanov concluded that the HAK is still ready to resume negotiations with the government.
"If HAK activist Tigran Arakelyan arrested in August 2011 is set free in the coming days, we will be ready to return to the negotiation table," HAK leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan said Friday addressing several thousand ralliers at Yerevan's Liberty Square.
Speaking about the suspended government-opposition dialogue, the HHK spokesman said Arakelyan's arrest was a perfect trump card for the opposition to drag people to the square and escalate the situation.
Regarding Ter-Petrosyan's speech at Liberty Square, Sharmazanov said he did not understand HAK leader's assessments on the legitimacy of presidential and parliamentary elections.
"Legitimacy is not a legal category. It is a socio-psychological category which can be changed. For example, you can gain 90 % of votes, as was the case with Levon Ter-Petrosyan during the 1991 elections, but you can have zero legitimacy at the end of your office. And the vice versa," Sharmazanov said stressing that the elections were, in the main, legal and legitimate despite the reported shortcomings.
To confirm his words he cited the resolution circulated in the Monitoring Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) by PACE co- rapporteurs on Armenia Axel Fischer (Germany, EPP/CD) and John Prescott (United Kingdom, SOC) who said that in recent years Armenian authorities have taken numerous measures to establish democracy in the country.
The HHK spokesman condemned Armenia's first President [Levon Ter-Petrosyan] for referring to the leaked Weakileaks cables during the rally, saying they might contain confidential information from diplomatic correspondence which needn't be made public.
