The top topic of the recent days campaign developments became the announcements of Levon Ter-Petrosyan and later Artur Baghdasaryan that they are in the process of negotiation in order to build a coalition during the upcoming presidential elections. Till now the head of Artur Baghdasaryan’s pre-election campaign Heghine Bisharyan was shunning to give a concrete answer to the questions of the journalists about the possibility that Baghdasaryan may join Ter-Petrosyan then the latter recently announced at one of his marz rallies that he has serious grounds to say that soon Artur Baghdasaryan and Raffi Hovhannisyan will join him in the race. Of course both Ter-Petrosyan and Baghdasaryan rushed to claim that they will be the joint opposition candidates and even tried to link the undecided Heritage party chairman Raffi Hovhannisyan to them. As it’s known starting from the beginning of the last fall the mentioned two candidates have been negotiating. It’s when Ter-Petrosyan visited the Legal State office. Even at that time there were rumors about the great chance of Baghdasaryan and Ter-Petrosyan building a coalition in the presidential elections. But we have what we have now. They are both running the race now. And it was at this stage when some people revealed the assumption that Baghdasaryan is Robert Kocharyan’s "project". These doubts would even more deepen the extremely radical speeches of the Legal State leader, which would only be addressed only against Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan and his supporters. There were also other reasons why Baghdasaryan’s was considered a protégé of Serzh Sargsyan. One of the reasons is that Baghdasaryan would have more privileges of being on TV compared to other oppositional candidates. It is not an accident that the results of all the social polls conducted in Armenia would show that Baghdasaryan has a higher rating than any other oppositional candidate. This was done to show to the opposition that Baghdasaryan is a governmental "project". However the recent developments coming up from Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s campaign team come to prove that certain things are changed and the opposite is being proven. And by that time the pro-ANM press and circles have started to spread news that Baghdasaryan is Kocharyan’s "shady project." After some time there were articles printed in the press that Baghdasaryan went to Sargsyan and asked for a Prime Minister’s position in order to support him. Sargsyan refused. During the Sunday’s rally when Baghdasaryan announced the possibility of endorsing Ter-Petrosyn (or vice versa). This gave grounds to assume that Baghdasaryan has demanded the position of a Prime Minister from Ter-Petrosyan and only after that he will agree to join Ter-Petrosyan. Narrow circles of the Legal State were yesterday speaking that Ter-Petrosyan has even promised to pass the government to Baghdasaryan after three years. According to certain politicians Baghdasaryan has delivered this message one more time and made sure that Sargsyan hears it in order to refresh his conversation with him. Sargsyan’s team considers Baghdasaryan’s support closed in any format. Even back in fall many of the analysts would say that regardless of the ambitions of Baghdasaryan and uncompromising intentions of Ter-Petrosyan in the event of endorsing each other a crisis will start in the teams of both of the candidates. The thing is that Ter-Petrosyan’s teammates the PPA and ANM not only are skeptical about Baghdasaryan but also refuse to communicate with him. The PPA members often remember the night of April 12 2004 when by the permission of the former Parliament Speaker Baghdasaryan the police attacked the protestors in front of the Parliament building. And the ANM members do not forget the numerous political conversions of Baghdasaryan. This includes the January-February months of 1998. This is the case when the union of the two leaders cannot automatically unite the electorate of the leaders. The electorate of the Legal State, which is proven by the last rally in Yerevan, shows that it doesn’t yield Ter-Petrosyan’s electorate. However the fact that the latter have originally preferred Artur Baghdasaryan shows that they are not Ter-Petrosyan’s electorate. It means that in the event of uniting this electorate may find some new opposition candidate to support or may not even participate in elections. At any rate, both in the event of uniting and separate participation Baghdasaryan will give away votes from both the opposition and government. As of Raffi Hovhannisyan’s party then he’s being used as a background here in order to reach concrete goals. Baghdasaryan wishes to become a Prime Minister and Hovhannisyan wants a long-term union. There are several people in Ter-Petrosyan’s team, who wish to become Prime Minister, who will do their best to hinder the Baghdasaryan-Ter-Petrosyan union because they have already made a lot of compromises when deciding to support Ter-Petrosyan. Nevertheless not too much time is left before the candidates make their final decisions by February 9. Despite this fact both Ter-Petrosyan and Baghdasaryan keep claiming by TV that they are the ultimate opposition candidate – "I am Khachikyan."
