ArmInfo. Yesterday at the meeting with Nikol Pashinyan we did not reach any agreement. We listened to the information about what the government is going to do. Mikael Melkumyan, Deputy President of the National Assembly of Armenia from the Tsarukyan Bloc faction, stated this on October 3 in an interview with journalists.
The Deputy President noted that there were discussions, as a result of which the government did not changed its opinion that the early parliamentary elections should be held in December of this year. Regarding whether there was an oral agreement that after the resignation of Nikol Pashinyan the Tsarukyan bloc would not nominate its candidate for the position of prime minister, as the Prime Minister said yesterday that the parliamentary forces would not nominate their candidate, Melkumyan said: ''We have no official decision on this issue. We discussed various issues, if a certain issue was discussed, this does not mean that the party voiced an official decision, "the Deputy President emphasized. He noted that negotiations are continuing as for the signing of the agreement Melkumyan stated that this issue is also being discussed. "There is no final consensus, you know, a proposal was made to conclude a gentlemen's agreement and to comply with it. That is, there is no need to sign agreements and memorandums indeed the government has been formed without a memorandum recently," the Deputy President emphasized.
Mikael Melkumyan noted that they are not against holding early elections the stumbling block in this matter is the deadline. He recalled that during the discussion and adoption of the government program, it was noted that the elections should take place within a year. However, it was planned to hold them in May or June in order to create equal competitive conditions for all political forces. To recall, yesterday at the call of RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan thousands of people gathered in front of the building of the Armenian parliament in Yerevan to protest against the bill passed by the deputies, which makes it difficult to dissolve the parliament. After the rally, the Prime Minister held talks with parliamentary factions, and said that they had agreed that after his resignation, the factions would not nominate their candidate for prime minister twice, which would lead to the dissolution of parliament and early elections.