YEREVAN. – By initially submitting to the Constitutional Court a formal request to postpone the presidential election and by subsequently withdrawing it, Presidential candidate, opposition National Self-Determination Union Chairman Paruyr Hayrikyan—who is discharged from hospital after being treated for a gunshot wound after a recent assassination attempt—became a bright example for self-destruction of a politician. First Secretary Ruben Tovmasyan of the Communist Party of Armenia Central Committee stated this during a press conference on Tuesday.

In his words, if seven or eight presidential candidates are considered active players, we can say Hayrikyan scored in his own net with just one strike. 

“You should not work like that with the people. In the end result, Hayrikyan came to prove that the assessment of the seventeen years he spent in Soviet prisons for [his] ‘political convictions’ does not correspond to the reality; this gives me the right to say that he was an ordinary convict. You were given an opportunity to prove that you have determination and you could have gone all the way,” Tovmasyan said.     

Photo by Arsen Sargsyan/NEWS.am