The slander suit launched by Gurgen Khachatryan, Rector of the Vanadzor Pedagogical Institute, against former instructor Lusineh Ashoughyan is continuing at the Vanadzor Regional Court.

Khachatryan has named Hetq Online and ATV television as 3rd party defendants but isn’t making any demands against them.

Defendant Ashoughyan reiterated that the statements she made in the TV news reports alleging that exams to fill vacant teaching positions at the Institute were a mere formality and that jobs were in fact being handed back to teachers whose contract had expired.

Ashoughyan said in court that evidence of this would be to compare the names of those applying for the exams and those who won. In most cases, those applying were teachers whose contracts had just expired and that, with very few exceptions, there were no outside applicants.

Ashoughyan presented her own example as bolstering her claim. After her teaching contract had expired, it was lengthened again by a new contract. No open competition took place for the newly vacated post.

The defendant claims that she was eventually dismissed from her teaching job and told that the school didn’t have enough hours for her. Soon after, however, an exam was announced for the very same job and was won by Heghineh Melkonyan, a person who had never taught at the school.

Ashoughyan asked the court how the school suddenly came up with sufficient teaching hours to hire a new instructor.

“If my contract was to be expired, the school is obligated to announce a new competition four months ahead of time, renew my contract or else advise me that due to a cutback in hours I would be dismissed. They noted that there were no hours and never announced a competition. However, on May 25, the school announced that there was a vacant instructor post at the Armenian department,” she stated.

Plaintiff attorney Vano Yeghiazaryan responded that it wasn’t the rector who organized competitions but rather the school’s scientific council.

He presented as evidence the announcement that appeared in the May 30, 2009 edition of the “Republic of Armenia” newspaper regarding the vacant teaching post, noting that no names appeared in the announcement. The attorney thus argued that the competition hadn’t been announced specifically for Heghineh Melkonyan.

In an attempt to prove her point that employment processes were being rigged at the school, defendant Ashoughyan brought to the court’s attention the matter of the 2011 election to hire a dean for the pedagogical faculty.

One of the conditions, according to the by-laws, was that an applicant couldn’t be older than the age of a pensioner.

Ashoughyan stated that the election for the dean was scheduled for May 25 and that on May 4, the scientific council changed the age clause in the by-laws. This was done, she argued, in order that the only one candidate for the job, Tereza Shahverdyan, born in 1945, would qualify.

The court said it would accept the documentation for examination and see if it had any bearing on the case.

Referring to her statement that appeared in Hetq that, “It was all planned ahead and intentional. It was all ordered from the top. They just got Lusineh Sargsyan and her mother to do the dirty work”, Ashoughyan argued that the plaintiff had missed the deadline to appeal.

The Hetq reporter didn’t deny the fact that the day before the article was published she had a talk with the rector, wanting to get his side of the story. However, since the rector refused to submit to a taped interview, the reporter went ahead and ran the piece without his commentary.

The plaintiff’s attorney claimed that the rector had no knowledge of the Hetq article and that he had taken a copy to the rector. Attorney Yeghiazaryan said in court that he had suggested that the rector take the matter to the courts.

Yeghiazaryan said that the rector doesn’t use the internet and hardly reads newspapers. The attorney said that once a month he goes through the papers and submits a summary to the rector. When the court asked if the school didn’t have a media person on staff, Yeghiazaryan said he believed it did.

The attorney then stated that his client might change the amount of the compensation demand at the end of the trial.

Ashoughyan then motioned the court to subpoena VSPI instructors Lusineh and Liza Sargsyan. The two had gone to the police charging Ashoughyan with making death threats against them. The charges were dropped and the two were in turn charged with false denunciation.

Ashoughyan also motioned that Tereza Shahverdyan, who had accompanied the Sargsyans to the police station, be summoned as well.

The sides did not oppose the motion.