Discords continued within the opposition Armenian National Movement (HHSh) as Karapet Rubinyan, a prominent HHSh member, spread an open letter on Facebook social network on Monday, announcing that he could not tolerate the recent rigged election of the HHSh board chairman.

“According to my observations and the information that I possess, the recent elections of HHSh board chairman and members at the July 17 party congress were rigged. This is a very strange and sad event because it took place in a party, which has liberal-democratic principles; a party, which being part of the Armenian National Congress [ANC] is complaining about and struggling against unfair and rigged elections in 2008 for more than two years,” wrote Rubinyan, who is a co-founder of the Committee for the Protection of Political Prisoners and Persecuted in Armenia and himself was kept in jail for 71 days after the March 1 post-election clashes in 2008.

At the same time, Karen Karapetyan, head of the HHSh news service, also resigned, reasoning that the head of the HHSh news service must be one of the HHSh administration members, whereas his candidacy has not been nominated for being or not being included in the administration staff.

The HHSh congress was preceded by the resignations of vice-chairman of the party Khachatur Kokobelyan and later party chairman Ararat Zurabyan. The speculation was that they were holding negotiations with authorities.

Rubinyan is especially irritated by the fact that at the congress the leader of the opposition (Levon Ter-Petrosyan), referring to the Karabakh issue, instead of speaking about further plans of the struggle spoke about the baseless nature of the struggle: “It is all the same, if there is no concession, nothing would come out.”
Both persons who resigned told ArmeniaNow that they have received no response from HHSh yet.

“I posted my open letter on the website [Facebook] late last night, and I will refrain from comments for a week,” Rubinyan told ArmeniaNow. Karapetyan says that he remains a rank-and-file HHSh member.