YEREVAN. – The question, which was posed in Strasbourg to the President of Armenia, was just a reason to once again review the makeup of the Armenian National Assembly (NA) delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).    

Delegation leader Davit Harutyunyan told the aforesaid to news reporters on Wednesday commenting on the decision remove the opposition Heritage Party NA Faction from the delegation. 

In Harutyunyan’s words, earlier, no one was concerned that not all NA factions are included in the PACE delegation.

“Specifically, the [coalition government’s junior partner, Orinats Yerkir (Rule of Law) Party] RLP Faction was not represented in the delegation, and there was an initial arrangement that there will be a rotation.

“The objective of the delegation is to represent the political palette of our parliament. It is not right when the parliamentary majority is represented in the delegation as a minority,” Davit Harutyunyan maintained.

To the remark that Heritage’s NA Faction leader Zaruhi Postanjyan—who was also a member of the NA delegation to the PACE—plans to challenge this decision, Harutyunyan responded that Postanjyan has that right.       

“Everyone should protect his/her rights by all possible means; but the appeal will be futile. There will be PACE MPs that will support Postanjyan, but this will not affect the outcome,” stated the head of the Armenian National Assembly delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. 

To note, during the question and answer session at the PACE plenary session in Strasbourg, France, on October 2, Zaruhi Postanjyan had asked Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan the following question:

“You have appeared here [in the PACE session] not by the will of the people, but [rather] as a consequence of organized crime, the theft of the Armenian people’s vote. Therefore you cannot de jure represent the will and right of the Armenian people. [So,] I’ll give you another question. Have you been to a casino in Europe and lost 70 million euros there? And who paid that amount in your stead?”     

Posing such question had caused great controversy in Armenia.