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I would like to say thank you to Mr. Tiny Kox for his personal commitment for preparing and presenting this really very difficult report.

For me it is a very symbolic moment. This is my first speech as the head of Armenian delegation and I am very glad to return to this Assembly. I have worked here for 3.5 years and it means that I am not a new member to this Assembly. However, I am not pleased to come back in the period when the first thing in the Progress Report is the issue of no confidence towards the President of the Assembly and corruption scandals and creation of the investigation body.

Back then when we were speaking about corruption issues it was only on the level of rumour or usually we referred to the freedom of speech or freedom of expressing our opinions but now we are facing the situation where everybody can speak about a person who has zero credibility in this Assembly, everybody can argue that he doesn’t have any trustworthiness, everybody can be certain that he is corrupt and is engaged in activities that are in contradiction with the values of the Assembly, yet that person can continue his activity creating atmosphere as exactly stated Mr. Grainger confidence crisis in this Assembly. This situation is unacceptable and intolerable, but not in the sense that we just need to voice about it but to actually act upon as it is described in the Progress Report.

Dear colleagues,

We inherited this Assembly, this organization from 2 politicians as a cradle for democracy who really cherished these values and now we should take responsibility for these values.

We are the ones who shape the face of this Assembly and because we are the face of this Assembly we should decide who should present this Assembly, who can take steps on behalf of the Assembly and it means that we should show our attitude towards those people.

To sum up my speech I would like to call for action: either we all bear collective responsibility for the Assembly or our attitude towards the Assembly changes in a sense that we do not treat it as a cradle for democracy but just a place for mere opinions of some rapporteurs. I would like to remind my Azeri colleagues about the so called very symbolic Sarsang Report. It is really indeed a very important issue, it isn’t a humanitarian issue, but because of the rapporteur or the so called corrupt person it became only a political issue, nothing else, and we really should acknowledge that it is very important for all of us for everything we are cherishing here.