Suren Sahakyan: There is no need to pin special hopes on the new  parliament

ArmInfo.I see no reason to consider the National Assembly of the eighth convocation a better parliament than the previous one. And I do not pin any special hopes  on it, primarily due to the fact that the early elections held on  June 20 only preserved, but did not in any way resolve the existing  internal political conflicts. Suren Sahakyan, leader of the  "Citizen's Decision" Social-Democratic Party, expressed a similar  opinion to ArmInfo.

"The core problem is that, during the analysis of electoral processes  s in Armenia, as a rule, only the process of voting by citizens on  the day of elections is taken into account. This is an important,  however, only a small part of the entire electoral process.   Meanwhile, we must admit that the last elections were held in a  completely different environment, which could contribute to the  formation of an effective and normal parliament," he said.

According to the politician, the fact of voting by a certain number  of voters under the influence of fear, often threats, led him to such  a conclusion.  According to Sahakyan, this referring to the vote in  favor of the "Civil Contract" party solely for fear of seeing the  "Armenia" bloc in power. And also about a similar vote of a part of  society that does not want to see Nikol Pashinyan at the helm of the  authorities, already in favor of "Armenia" bloc. Meanwhile, in fact,  such a protest vote, in his opinion, is already the result of  violence against the freedom of expression of the will of citizens.

Commenting on the appeal of the 'Armenia' bloc to the Constitutional  Court with a demand to challenge the election results, Sahakyan  assessed it as a constitutional right of the election participants.   At the same time, he expressed interest in the publication of  information and facts of the violations found not at the level of  gossip, but at the level of concrete circumstances supported by  arguments in court.  Touching upon the idea of forming a permanent  format of cooperation between the Civil Contract party and  extra-parliamentary political forces, voiced recently by Prime  Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Sahakyan said that the leadership of his  party does not believe in the effectiveness of this venture.  

"My personal point of view is that it would definitely be worth  participating in this undertaking, only if it consisted in creating a  kind of platform for establishing solidarity in our country. It could  become the only platform for achieving at least some kind of  dialogue. However, I do not have any special expectations  with this  idea due to the same formal nature of the Armenian political field," the politician summed up.