National Assembly President Hovik Abrahamyan, in response to a statement sent several days ago by Deputies Hakob Hakobyan, Myasnik Malkhasyan and Sasoun Mikayelyan, jailed as "March 1st" defendants, merely sent his representatives to see them. Thus, in essence, the NA President sought to make it clear to them that he wasn't preparing to convene a session of parliament at their request. In reality, even that step would have been viewed as a great "sacrifice' on the part of Hovik Abrahamyan.

The demand of the jailed deputies to convene a session of the National Assembly and to demand that the chief prosecutor appear and present the legal basis and proven evidence to justify his petitioning the National Assembly on March 4, 2008 to strip them of their immunity. At first glance it would seem that this would be vital for the deputies who circulated the statement in order, once and for all, to publicly receive an answer to all the questions or, in their opinion, to prove the "bankruptcy" of the "March 1st Seven" court case. However, strange as it may seem, by taking that step they are providing a great service to the political parliamentary majority and to Hovik Abrahamyan, personally, by offering them a chance to save their leadership authority.

And here, the problem is the same. Will the RoA chief prosecutor present such facts or not, because the answer, one would think, is clear from the start. The prosecutor cannot present such evidence, because if they were so irrefutable and convincing, as was necessary, the necessity to amend Articles 225 and 300 of the RoA Criminal Code would never have arisen and prosecutor wouldn't be dragging out the "March 1st Seven" trial by ludicrous delaying tactics or by yielding to the provocative actions of the defendants.

The problem lies in the restoration of the authority of the National Assembly and in the interest of the National Assembly president and the political majority to see this happen.

On March 4, 2008, Tigran Torosyan, then president of the National Assembly, interpreted the need to have the prosecutor intervene and sustain the move to deprive these four deputies (including Khachatur Soukiasyan) of their immunity in the following fashion - "We have the one problem; create opportunities. The chief prosecutor has come with that proposal. Create opportunities so that the examination can clarify what took place at that time. Will we do this or not?

This is the issue at hand." At the time, the National Assembly had no other way out, even though it was evident that the chief prosecutor substantiated his intervention on very general charges and on the complete absence of any specific evidence. However, there was the problem of presenting the possibility to assist the preliminary investigation and formulating an evidentiary base vital for the prosecution. By going underground, Khachatur Soukiasyan gave the National Assembly additional grounds for adopting the position it did.

Exactly eleven months have passed since March 4, 2008, but the preliminary investigative body has not provided the National Assembly any concrete answer to any question and has remained within the framework of a general perspective of the prior charges.

That's to say that the prosecutor, squandering the confidence of the National Assembly and the opportunity it granted, obligated the nation's legislative body to place itself in a rather unimportant situation. Unimportant, because by clearly looking through one's fingers at this disposition of the prosecutor, the National Assembly never demanded substantiating evidence regarding the charges filed against the deputies during the entire eleven month period and it isn't clear whether the parliament even considered doing so. During that period the National Assembly never attempted to obtain a clarification from Aghvan Hovsepyan regarding such leading questions such as, when all is said and done, how long will it take to prove the guilt of these individuals, how long will they be incarcerated, and why it took ten months for the case of the "March 1st Seven" to be sent to the courts? The problem was that such indifference could prove to be a precedent, an auger of things to come. No longer can the possibility be ruled out that the prosecutor, whatever the motivation and without specific charges, based solely on political considerations, can enter parliament and call for stripping any given deputy of his or her immunity, convinced that the parliament will sit with folded hands and not raise any objections regarding his decision affecting the destiny of the deputies.

The jailed deputies, by their statement and letter to the National Assembly president, are focusing the attention of the parliament on just these issues and directly demanding that the body defends its right to independent decision-making and to obligate the prosecutor's office and the other branches of government to treat the legislature with the respect it warrants. If we approach the problem from this angle, then the National Assembly president, rather than waiting for the letter of the jailed deputies or sending his underlings to see them in an attempt to water-down their statement, should have demanded, out of his own initiative, from the prosecutor an accounting, and several months ago at that.

On the one hand, this would have given him the possibility of presenting the "March 1st Seven" to the authorities in a more neutral light, while on the other hand, permitting him to fulfill his promise to improve the role played by the National Assembly and its standing. However, in order to take such a step, the National Assembly president, out of necessity, must be an "independent player”, a trait that bureaucrat Hovik Abrahamyan has not specifically displayed in his previous executive posts.

And it is clear from the get-go that to respond to the demand of the deputies, in other words, to extricate him from the matter, Hovik Abrahamyan should have employed the option of changing Articles 225 and 300 of the RoA Criminal Code.