FIRST PARLIAMENT SESSION POSTPONED

UNCLAS YEREVAN 000696 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV KDEM AM SUBJECT: FIRST PARLIAMENT SESSION POSTPONED (U) Sensitive but unclassified. Please protect accordingly. ¶1. (SBU) Parliament staffers and political party sources tell us that the scheduled May 31 inaugural session of the new National Assembly has been postponed until June 7. It is expected that the inaugural session will see the election of the new parliament chairman (or speaker),two deputy chairmen, and nine committee chairmen for the upcoming session. We understand that intensive negotiations remain underway among the three parties expected to be part of the new governing coalition: the Republican Party, Prosperous Armenia, and the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun, necessitating the delay. ¶2. (SBU) Armenian leaders are creatively interpreting the Constitutional specification that the first session of the new National Assembly must be held on the third Thursday following the parliamentary election, seemingly in order to buy themselves an extra week. We hear that their rationale is that the Constitutional requirement really means three weeks from the official announcement of results (which happened May 19) rather than three weeks from Election Day. ¶3. (SBU) We have heard sharply divergent rumors about who will be chairman of the new parliament, with some sources predicting incumbent Tigran Torosian will remain in the job, while others predict the influential Territorial Administration Minister Hovik Abrahamian will take the helm. We also don't rule out a possible dark horse, third candidate winning the slot. The fact that usually well-informed sources tell us different things, suggests there may still be hard bargaining going on behind the scenes. GODFREY