Heritage Party MP Armen Martirosyan, who was involved in a scuffle with police yesterday outside the Government Building in Yerevan, said today that he was grateful to the cops, "for not finding any guns, ammunition or atomic weapons, not even a stick, on my person." MP Martirosyan joked that no one, not even the police, can argue that yesterday’s protest of banned street vendors was anything but peaceful.

The embattled MP even went so far as to thank those police officers who filmed most of yesterday’s incident and turned the film over to state-run H1 TV. The Heritage Party MP said that the film clearly shows that the cops violated the letter of the law when they started to shove him and the others present. MP Martirosyan said that the TV station overstepped its bounds when it negatively commented on the actions of the Heritage Party MP’s. He stated that the argument made by the police that anyone touching an officer in the United States is immediately jailed is absurd. "Is that the argument you make H1TV? Any cop in the U.S. who shoves people around like this automatically loses his job," said Martirosyan.