Irina Gasparyan, President of the Federation of Assyrian Organizations of Armenia, is an MP candidate in the snap parliamentary elections of Armenia scheduled for December 9.

She is included in the second part of the Bright Armenia (Lusavor) party's national list as a national minority representative.

Armenia’s Electoral Code allows political parties vying in nationwide elections to include representatives of the country’s four largest national minorities as candidates in the second part of the national list. According to the last census held in Armenia, the four largest national minorities are the Yezidis, Russians, Assyrians and Kurds.

Assyrians are the third largest national minority in Armenia, numbering 2,796 according to the 2011 census.

Gasparyan says she’s been cooperating with political forces - mainly with the government - since 1997, while protecting the interests of the Assyrian community.

Issues with allocation of seats to the national minorities

Gasparyan doesn’t like the formula which allocates mandates to the national minorities, since it’s quite unclear. She claims that only the largest national minority –the Yezidis- know that their representative will get a mandate from the political force that gets most of the votes. In case of other minorities, the regulations are not very clear, and the conditions are not fair.

"After the past elections, only Yezidi MP Rustam Makhmudyan was active in terms of adopting the Yezidi Genocide bill, while other national minorities didn’t solve any issue. In fact, national minorities are deprived of the possibility to elect their representative. I'll cite the example of Arzni, a village in Armenia’s Kotayk Province, with a large Assyrian community. Since Kotayk Provincial Governor Romanos Petrosyan cooperates very well with our community, it is clear that people will support him. He represents the My Step alliance, but this alliance has included a member of the Assyrian community in its list whom people do not want. It turns out that if people vote for the provincial governor, the political force will get a lot of votes and the representative of the Assyrian community from this list will pass to the parliament. This makes our people face an immoral choice," says Gasparyan.

The Assyrian candidate who’s now included in My Step alliance list was an MP from the Republican Party’s national minority list in the last election. Irina says he didn’t do anything and won’t make any change if he gets a seat now, either.

Gasparyan mentions an incident when one Assyrian boy was detained, and his parent applied to the MP for help, but the MP replied that the party didn’t allow him to raise issues. Irina believes that most of the political forces prefer to include those representatives of national minorities who obey them and don’t defend their national interests.

Gasparyan says she will work on amending the Electoral Code if elected so that the national minorities have the right to elect their representative.

Irina plans to promote Assyrian language and culture

Besides, the Assyrians have a number of issues to be resolved.

The Assyrian language has been included in the compulsory curriculum in schools of Assyrian communities, and in one Yerevan public school, since 1998.

The Assyrian Federation tries to collaborate with the Ministry of Education and Science to establish new standards and training programs for the teachers of Assyrian language, who used to teach after graduating the secondary school in the past.

However, the new government is not yet familiar with their programs and doesn’t support them. Irina believes that Assyrian teachers should have a diploma, while no university in Armenia has such an educational program.

Gasparyan's future projects include the establishment of an International Assyrian Center in Armenia. Since Assyrians do not have a state, and are scattered around the world, their language and culture need a higher level of protection in order to develop.

Gasparyan is convinced that Armenia has all conditions for creating an international Assyrian center, which will attract Assyrians living in other countries to Armenia to get an Assyrian language education.

Gasparyan says this is also in the interests of Armenia as it will show the state’s support of national minorities on the international level.

As for the development of the Assyrian culture, the candidate states that the government neither impedes nor prohibits its development and even allocates a certain amount of money from the state budget. She argues it is not enough.

Irina Gasparyan hopes that Bright Armenia will come in second place in the election and that she’ll get a seat in parliament.

However, even if she doesn’t become an MP, she hopes that she will be able to raise questions through the political party in the National Assembly, since there are normal working conditions inside the party and everybody has an opportunity to actively participate in the discussions.