The delegation selected for the September 25-30 visit included four other Armenian parliamentarians. Like Simonian, they all are members of Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party.
Movses Harutiunian, the spokesman for Simonian, said on Monday that Fergus has phoned and asked the latter to “postpone the visit until the internal political situation in the country [Canada] is resolved.”
“The other circulating theories related to the postponement of the visit are lies and have nothing to do with reality,” Harutiunian wrote on Facebook.
“In Canada, one of the coalition forces has left the [governing] coalition and there is an internal political crisis in the country,” the official claimed in separate comments to the Hraparak newspaper.
The “theories” cited by him stem from a September 10 statement released by the Canadian chapter of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), a pan-Armenian party highly critical of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
“It is worrying to know that Alen Simonian’s delegation includes only members of the ruling Civil Contract party, without opposition MPs,” read the statement. “The opposition MPs of the Armenia-Canada parliamentary friendship group of the National Assembly of Armenia were intentionally left out of this delegation. This phenomenon itself is a violation of democratic values.”
“Canadian Armenians have no intention of welcoming the visit of the delegation of the current ruling party, who have consistently violated the basic principles of democracy and human rights in Armenia,” added the statement.
Dashnaktsutyun’s main organization in Armenia is part of the country’s largest opposition alliance that finished second in the last parliamentary elections. It has been at the forefront of major antigovernment protests staged in Yerevan in recent years.