The newspaper, which had information about the parties and single-mandate candidates, who are going to participate in the May 12 elections, has started to be used as a book tag in our house. The information of that newspaper interested the members of my family as much as they were interested in the moves of the children. It’s always interesting to follow the process and success of those candidates and parties, which are predicting to have victory in the elections. It’s like sports waiting for a bet. By reading it we hope to see new names next to such candidates as Gagik Tsarukyan or Hrant Grigoryan. Unfortunately it doesn’t happen. So why do certain people representing the RPA or the Prosperous Armenia not have any competitors? And this happens in the event when during their long record of MP activity they haven’t said a word from the session hall. Moreover they participate in elections with a special pride. They participate on their own in their districts feeling like they are the kings of the districts. They don’t agree to stop their deputy activity even for a second. They think that once they submit their documents to the CEC they can easily be elected. We’d like to ask the opposition why it doesn’t provide competitors against these candidates? The opposition, which doesn’t nominate normal majoritarian candidates, keeps complaining about the failure of the 41-majoritarian candidate plan. We decided to ask the opposition party representatives why they haven’t nominated their candidates in districts 7, 20, 27, 28 and 32. The chair of the National Unity Party, Artashes Geghamyan stated, “we didn’t find it expedient.” We asked, “didn’t you find it expedient to nominate in the previous elections when oligarchs were running without opponents?” “You see, you are interested in their biographies, but we don’t,” he answered. Our efforts to make him understand that his answer didn’t make sense, failed. “You write, the one who understand will understand. It’s not necessary for all the readers to understand the answers of Geghamyan,” he said.
The communication associate of the Legal State Party, Susanna Abrahamyan mentioned that her party hasn’t nominated candidates in the mentioned districts because it doesn’t have suitable candidates for those districts. She said that the reason that Artur Baghdasaryan wasn’t nominated by majoritarian electoral system, was the politcal decision of the party. One of the initiators of the “Impeachment” alliance, Nicol Pashinyan could easily be nominated as he could be elected. Pashinyan said that this question had been discussed “however the Alternative has decided not to nominate single-mandate candidates as the plan failed. Besides that our goal is not just to have mandates. Our purpose is to bring people back to the square.” Pashinyan mentioned that participation through proportional system has many privileges. Particularly he mentioned the free mandatory airing time. As for the majoritarian system there are fewer privileges. “We are trying to equally distribute our forces.” Member of the Republic Party, Souren Soureniants agrees that the opposition should have nominated more single-mandate candidates as it would be a good opportunity to get rid of kings, feudalism and authoritarian government. “As you know our party has initially been for participation of the opposition in the 41 format. And as the plan didn’t work out we decided not to nominate single-mandate candidates.” According to Soureniants the reason why Smbat Ayvazyan, who had participated in the last elections through majoritarian system, hadn’t been nominated during this elections against Samvel Alexanyan, is a completely different political situation. To our question that maybe the opposition is afraid to run against the oligarchs by knowing in advance that they are going to lose Soureniants mentioned, “I ensure you that the reason why we are not running against Tsarukyan or Alexanyan is not the fear factor. It’s just Armenia doesn’t have a political culture. Armenia is a feudal country. We are also guilty.” Nevertheless even prior to elections we’d like to congratulate Gagik Tsarukyan, Hrant Grigoryan, Samvel Alexanyan, Sourik Poghosyan, Melik Manoukyan. The meeting with opposition will take place in the open air again.