The upcoming parliamentary elections will take place in five months. The more the elections are approaching, the more actively the political powers are negotiating.
It is spoken that the political powers of Arshak Sadoyan and Manouk Gasparyan have already agreed to join each other before the elections. It is very interesting that most of the politicians that want to collaborate have criticized and let down each other in the past.
Several days ago the leader of “National Unity” party, Artashes Geghamyan said that he was negotiating with Stepan Demirchyan on collaborating during the upcoming elections. It seems that the party of Stepan Demirchyan, “Armenian Democratic Party” is not interested in that collaboration. It is not excluded that “Republic” party may collaborate with the ANM. Besides that, there are several new alliances and powers within the opposition (such as the “Anti-criminal movement”, “Civic disobedience” initiatives and the political alliance of Raffi Hovhannisyan and Vazgen Manoukyan), which can be improved and may form other political units as well. Also it is spoken that “Rule of Law”, UCR and “Dashink” parties are going to join before the parliamentary elections. We asked about this from “Dashink” party, but they neither refuted nor approved that information. Yesterday we talked to member of “Dashink” party political board Andrank Tevanyan, who told us that they had decided to participate in the parliamentary elections alone and not to collaborate with any other political parties. “We don’t see any alliances. That is just tactics”, said Mr. Tevanyan and added, “As for collaboration, we negotiate not only with the parties you said (Rule of Law and UCR), but as well as with other parties so that we prevent any kind of violations and protect the rights of journalists and voters. I wander where you got that information from. We haven’t published any official information like that”. Notwithstanding, the leaders of “Dashink” don’t exclude possibilities of making alliances with other political powers. “The political board of our party has decided to participate in the elections separately. We haven’t had any other board meetings since the latest decision and we can’t speak about any new strategic plans as far as we haven’t organized our next board meeting” said Mr. Tevanyan and added that the new board meeting will be organized this year before the parliamentary elections. As for the expected board meeting, Mr. Tevanyan says that “something may change” after that meeting. “After the board meeting it is possible that some tactical things may change. We can say whether something has changed or not only after the next board meeting. As for our existing strategy, nothing has changed in it and we are going to participate in the elections separately” said Mr. Tevanyan. Mr. Tevanyan says that they think that it is possible to collaborate not only with the RL and UCR, but with the other oppositional parties as well. Concerning the possible collaboration Mr. Tevanyan says that such cooperation can be close or just tactical. “It is not a secret that we collaborate with the UCR now and have done that before too. However, we haven’t entered into a closer cooperation with anyone yet” concluded Mr. Tevanyan.
Constitutional barriers
It is worth mentioning that the leader of “Dashink” party, Samvel Babayan may have problems with the law and may not be eligible to participate in the parliamentary elections. The problem is the fact that Article 64 of the RA Constitution provides that only those citizens are eligible for participating in the parliamentary elections and being elected that have permanently lived in Armenia during the last five years. This is the provision that may be a barrier for Samvel Babayan to be elected. This provision may be a problem for Vardan Oskanyan as well. Vardan Oskanyan has numerously said that he doesn’t want to give up with politics and wants to have his part in the development of the country, thus he may want to be nominated as well and may have such problems too. Concerning his future plans the foreign affairs minister has not clarified any long-term plans and says that he has not thought about running for president and says that he should think about the parliamentary elections first. Notwithstanding, Vardan Oskanyan is not eligible to run for president during the presidential elections of 2008. Thus, yesterday the foreign affairs minister’s spokesman, Vladimir Karapetyan told us that the foreign affairs minister received Armenian citizenship in April, 1998. According to Article 50 of the RA Constitution, only those citizens can run for president and be elected, who have permanently lived in Armenia during the last ten years. In April, 2008, Vardan Oskanyan will be eligible to run for president, however, the elections will take place in February, i.e. two months before the date when Vardan Oskanyan will have a right to be elected. In a word, Vardan Oskanyan may have problems connected with the mentioned two months; nevertheless, in our country “such small problems” cannot be a barrier and may be worked out if they really want it.