Yerevan, 9 June 2023

Armenian National Platform’s (ANP) 44 members, including 30 members of the Civil Society Forum (SCF) took part in the Conference/Meeting of delegates. Taking into consideration that the deliberations on the issue of terminating the ANP Coordinator’s powers with subsequent voting was scheduled and the matter was within the competence of the meeting of ANP delegates, at the request of the ANP coordinator the Conference/Meeting of delegates was presided by Levon Barseghyan, the chairman of the board of the Asparez Journalists’ Club.

A media representative with a video camera was also present at the deliberations and the Conference delegates started a discussion on allowing live media coverage of the event. The motion to sanction the presence of media at the conference was not backed by the majority of votes and the chairman asked the media representative to leave the conference room. You can find the video report on the conference before the journalist left the room on the following link: https://youtu.be/PU-fApkfVGM

The first point on the agenda was the petition drafted by 14 organizations (for details click here) and it was presented by Mikayel Hovhannisyan and Ashot Melikyan. They also answered questions raised by the participants.

Following that, Eastern Partnership SCF ANP Coordinator Hovsep Khurshudyan responded to and provided clarifications on three of the five points in the allegations raised (for details click here) adding that he would not refer to the 4th and 5th points out of respect to the earlier call by the Eastern Partnership SCF ANP Secretariat NGO’s board members to the Conference and ANP delegates urging not to discuss issues regarding the Secretariat’s executive director (for details click here). Following his speech, the ANP Coordinator answered questions from the participants.

During the deliberations, the participants voiced their concerns, questions, and observations on shortcomings, contradictions, and actual inapplicability of some points in the statutes of the Platform and the Secretariat NGO. Concerns, questions, and observations were articulated also on the matters of revision of the mentioned statutes, the inefficient practice of management cases, risks of politicizing the Platform, handling work disputes as well as the necessity of raising the efficiency of all of its members and working groups.   

At the end of the 10-hour-long conference, those among the signatories to the petition, demanding the termination of powers of the ANP Coordinator, who attended the Conference, requested to vote on the motion articulated in their petition.

The proposal expressed in the petition signed by 14 ANP members on passing a resolution of no-confidence in ANP Coordinator Hovsep Khurshudyan and termination of his powers in that position was voted by 18 delegates. The voting results were as follows: 9 voted in favor, 6 votes were against with one abstention (with two others not attending the meeting). The motion was rejected.

The conference concluded its work at 9:15 pm. 

EaP CSF Armenian National Platform Secretariat