Armenia needs balanced parliament not to allow ruling force endanger country’s future: Vigen Sargsyan

The debates with the participation of number 1 candidates in the lists of parties and blocs is an important culture which has set a good tradition and must be fixed by the law, N1 in the Republican party list Vigen Sargsyan said in an interview to Aysor.am.

- Mr Sargsyan, can we tell that the debates succeeded?

- The participation of the first numbers of all the participating forces was very essential. It is an important culture. I want to remind that at the previous elections the Republican party came up with the same initiative but because of refusal of two forces to participate in the debates the others refused to participate in them too which was rather wrong decision.

At the same time I regret that we did not have an opportunity to debate separately. I think if we had such an opportunity with Nikol Pashinyan, the other candidates would have more chances to express their viewpoints at yesterday’s debates. In this case it was clear that the attention was focused on the two favorite forces.

- What about the content?

- There were issues we managed to thoroughly refer to, while some issues were of formal nature. There are forces which participated in the debates not to present their programs but to make the “blacks” “blacker”. Of course, they did not succeed in it.

- Did you manage to say what you wanted during these three hours?

- Of course no. Three and half hours are 210 minutes. If to consider the participation of 11 people and questions and interruptions of the anchors, it appears that each person had 15 minutes. Small format debates give better chances to the political forces and the people. I think in this regard the conduction of debates with the participation of 3-4 forces by the Public TV was more effective.

- Mr Sargsyan, what are your forecasts regarding the chances of the party to appear in the NA?

- I have learnt to make just one forecast relating the elections. If everything proceeds normally the Central Electoral Commission will publish initial results late at night and summed up results in the morning. Usually I make no other predictions. Everything will be determined by the people’s votes. I urge all the citizens to implement their civil duty.

- Don’t you predict to be the second either?

- I do not want to speak about it at all. I just know that there are many concerned people and yesterday’s debate must hint them once again that the only force that will fight for making their voice heard in the parliament is the Republican party. We are the only force which has human resources, knowledge, experience, team which may work effectively. We have openly criticized the activity of the government headed by Nikol Pashinyan, presenting numbers, facts.

We are not electing parliament, force or a counter-force for a day, a month or a year to give them time to work. Unfortunately, Mr Pashinyan speeded-up the process so much that people do not have enough time to orient who to elect for the upcoming five years.

It is necessary to understand whether we will have counter-balance or single-person parliament.

We will either have parliament counter-balanced by a political force which mobilizes the team, clever people for the solutions of issues or we will have typical populist situation when there is single governed force surrounded by pocket opposition which will take the country through a very dangerous path.

- Tomorrow is the last day of the campaign. How do you assess it?

- It is very difficult to carry out a full campaign in 12 days. This time the accent was mainly put on social networks which ensure immediacy and flexibility.

Mass media too worked well and all were trying to cover the campaign at their most. May be there was a lack of coordination and in some cases biased approaches were displayed, especially in conditions when the lists of candidates of political forces included many journalists and they were trying to defend their corporative interests.

I think mass media worked well and the social networks were used effectively. We did utmost to make our position reach people.

- Mr Sargsyan, the wiretapped conversation between the NSS director and the PM appeared in the web yesterday. Will it affect the voting result, in your opinion?

- First I want to stress that I strictly condemn the phenomenon. Illegal wiretapping of the conversation took place. I think it is a really matter for concern regarding the protection of privacy of people. If it is possible to wiretap conversation of the leader of the country, NSS director, SIS chief it means neither of the citizens is protected from it. It means there is oppo on each citizen.

While on the other hand, irrespective of the situation being unpleasant, we should also pay attention to the content of the conversation.

On one hand I am impressed with the brave and consistent position of the NSS director who, in fact, predicts the danger of the decision to be made and tries to make the possible consequences clear to the PM, but on the other side it is worrying that they know the essence of the court ruling beforehand.

These are things that will influence the perception of justice. They will obviously affect the trust over the legal decisions to be made in the sidelines of this case.

I see a big political issue here. The acting PM has many times stated that no interference is possible, while in this case it is clear that he knows that before making the decision the judge calls and “specifies” the issue but does not respond to it, does not register that illegal actions are being undertaken and that the judge must be hold responsible for it.