Perhaps for the opposition the slogan “Levon President” was very pleasant. However what surprises the opposition comes up with? The Mayoral elections of Yerevan due May 31 constrain more realistic formulation of the opposition slogan by making it “Levon Mayor.” At any rate something happened, which may for a long time violate the protracted tranquility of Armenia. Levon Ter-Petrosyan will be leading the ANC list for the mayoral election of Yerevan on May 31. PPA chairman Stepan Demirchyan occupies the second place of the list. This is the case when the couple Gagik Beglaryan-Taron Margaryan nominated by the government doesn’t inspire too much of hope for the government victory. Such a list prepared by the opposition must create serious concerns for the government. According to that the possibility of the fair race of the government candidates will drastically decrease. This means that the scale of violations and fraud initiated by the government will grow incomparably. Newer financial means will be needed because in this scenario the volume of bribes will be larger. This is the reality regardless of the eloquent and lofty words of the RPA MP Armen Ashotyan. He claims that the governmental candidate will win anyway even if Mathew Bryza got nominated. As of Bryza he is totally right but the claims are totally exaggerated. The Prosperous Armenia party also echoed on Ter-Petrosyan’s nomination by stating that the Prosperous Armenia doesn’t see any issues with Ter-Petrosyan’s participation in the race. The party said that Ter-Petrosyan’s presence in the race is no surprise for them just like Beglaryan’s nomination. Nobody believes these allegations as Ter-Petrosyan’s participation in the race shuffles everybody’s playing cards and alters the motives of the candidates from the coalition. It is already clear that the sides will race till the end. It means the coalition should do everything to enervate the votes of the opposition. Moreover, as we mentioned the attitude of the government candidates about the mayoral elections will also change. If till now they were working by consenting their plans with the RPA as if the Prosperous Armenia occupies the second place and the ARF and the Legal State will overcome the 7% threshold then at present they will have to separately struggle for their parties. The new circumstances show that the RPA will have to use all of its resources for its votes. But now if the ARF and the Prosperous Armenia decide to seriously fight for their votes then these will be taken from the ones of the RPA. Otherwise those are not going to be the votes of the opposition. In the capital city of Armenia the candidate of the opposition and especially if this candidate is Levon Ter-Petrosyan has real chances to fairly win the elections. First of all, in the capital city the opposition has always objectively gained the majority of votes. Thus, it will be senseless to definitely insist that the first president will not vote the local elections as he wasn’t able to gain the votes of the majority of the votes during the presidential elections 2008. Will the Heritage party endorse the candidate of the Armenian National Congress? If relying on the behavior of the Heritage members when they found out about the ANC decision and that their opinion wasn’t taken into account it won’t be hard to imagine that the Heritage may even not endorse the ANC candidate? However if the Heritage ends up not endorsing Levon Ter-Petrosyan and nominating their own candidate then the reputation of both the Heritage and the ANC will fall. In that case this scenario will vaguely remind of the mysterious behavior of the Legal State presidential candidate Artur Baghdasaryan. The non-reconciled steps of the opposition will be a real gift for the government. Despite of everything for the government the race of the mayoral election is an issue of life and death. It means that all the possible and impossible means should be applied not to allow the opposition candidate victory. In our reality it is quite known that it’s not popular to speak about who’s running in the race. The important thing is who’s going to count the votes. Therefore, a natural question is created here. Will the opposition become dangerous if it loses the mayoral elections? If we go back we will remember that on March 1 2009 Levon Ter-Petrosyan said that the opposition’s vocabulary doesn’t have any words like revolution, attack, assault, demonstrations, etc. What will be the constitutional ways, which the opposition will initiate to protect its votes? This is perhaps the tactical secret of the opposition, which will finally this time be revealed.
