A Brief but Revealing Look into a Legislator’s Mind

Last week, MP Karo Karapetyan, along with two other Armenian parliament MP’s, paid a visit to the editorial offices of Hetq. What prompted his visit was an earlier Hetq article about him entitled “Political Directives Also Needed to Uncover Known Criminals”. It dealt with an incident that occurred one year ago during which MP Karapetyan opened fire on Artur Zadoyan, a resident of Nerkin Dvin.

The article contained the following excerpt of a face to face question and answer with Zadoyan: “On September 28, 2009, at 10:30, you came to my wine factory and proposed to pay an amount for some stolen cars; a Mercedes, a Touareg and a Porsche. I accepted the offer and we went to look at the cars…” We had also written that MP Karapetyan had sold some stolen cars. And take a guess at the first words uttered by MP Karapetyan when he visited Hetq.

“What, you don’t have an office?” I told him I didn’t. It appeared that the fact that I didn’t have my own personal office had a profound impact on the MP’s state of mind. Since the Hetq office is one big open loft space, MP Karapetyan had to speak in the presence of the other reporters working at the time. Naturally, he was thus forced to contain his emotions and tread lightly. The most amazing part of our conversation was when he declared, in full view of his two companions, that he never mentioned anything about seeing “stolen” cars during the questioning with Zadoyan.

I immediately showed MP Karapetyan that particular excerpt of the examination and read it aloud so that his parliament buddies could hear what he had said. MP Karapetyan blurted out that he had said nothing of the kind. “It was Aris who added that bit on,” said MP Karapetyan. (Aris refers to Aristakes Yeremyan, an investigator with the RA Special Investigations Service.) “Oh, really?” I asked, with more than a hint of amazement.

“Yeah; I even gave the name of a car, which he didn’t jot down,” the MP responded. In a word, the MP got tripped up and understandably repeated what had been written down in the records. MP Karapetyan then said that the only reason I had written that article about him was because I didn’t know him personally. He argued that he was a completely different type of guy than described in the article; that he was on the “up and up”.

My perception of him was completely mistaken, he told me. It was then that I understood that I really did have a mistaken opinion of Armenian MP’s. It dawned on me that I really didn’t know them “up close and in person”, since I hadn’t had any dealings with them for so long. They are actually interesting subjects for further study; individuals that exhibit a range of amazing, inexplicable and unimaginable character traits. To understand what makes them tick, we need to rub shoulders with them now and then.