Oligarchy still participates in elections, Electoral Code remains unchanged: National Progress party candidate to Pashinyan

The list of the National Progress is headed by a woman, Lusine Haroyan who enters politics from the tourism sphere.

Speaking to Aysor.am, Haroyan said she was engaged in all the civil fights and their party has been created on the basis of We are the Owners of our Country movement.

She said the change of power, the statements on amending Electoral Code have inspired hopes to the newly created party and they decided to try their strength.

“Till now we considered it useless to participate in the political processes, but now we think exclusive opportunities have been created. Our goal is not participation only. The party will continue its activity after the elections as well,” Haroyan told Aysor.am.

She though said that the unchanged Electoral Code and the rating system create some inconveniences for the party.

She said the authorities could have done more for the adoption of the amended code and described Pashinyan’s silence during its failure as “strange”.

Haroyan also did not agree with the acting PM’s statements as if all the promises given to people have been kept. “These statements are unacceptable as oligarchy still participates in the elections and the Electoral Code has not been changed,” she said.

“Pashinyan was also claiming that the oligarchs must stay away from politics but as we see now, it is not so, an oligarch has been renamed into property owner and memorandum was even signed. We would also like to avoid suspicious appointments like in case of Hunan Poghosyan,” Haroyan said.

As to the observation that Tsarukyan's team insists that their party leader is not oligarch, Haroyan said, “Oligarchy is a system when a person uses his huge financial means for having place in state governance levers and use this levers in favor of his business. PAP’s No 1 in the list is Gagik Tsarukyan. They were the second force in the NA. It means that while adopting bills they were guided by narrow party interests. It is a clear oligarchy. You are distributing scholarships before the elections, it is an oligarchic phenomenon,” she said.