The fact that some political powers criticized the decision of Heritage party and its will to have an independent opinion stands for the fact that the political field of Armenia is very primitive. I don’t know whether it would be good if the Heritage and ANM participated in the mayoral elections with a joint list, but it is very strange that only Heritage party is criticized for failure to do so. But no one asks the question why these people failed to endorse the ANM if before the ANM was formed they used to fight in the front line, protect people during the events of March 1 by visiting police stations to protect human rights, stay near the Myasnikyan square to keep with the protestors and have been actively advocating for the rights of political prisoners. It would be better not to discuss this issue at all or discuss it out of Ter-Petrosyan’s syndrome of doing everything in a perfect manner.
It is theoretically very easy to blame opposition powers for failure to give up their ambitions and join. But in reality it is very difficult because during the parliamentary elections of 2007 opposition parties failed to unite and change the proportion of political powers in the parliament as well. During the parliamentary elections 2007 the Republic party of Aram Z. Sargsyan, whose party representative Suren Surenyants criticized the Heritage on the radio Liberty recently, as well as New Times party leader Aram Karapetyan refused to endorse the Impeachment movement. They failed to unite despite the fact that they perfectly knew that it would result in losing their votes. Accordingly, people were expecting that the Heritage and ANM would join on the threshold of the mayoral elections but it did not happen.
It is not fair to blame the Heritage for failure to join because the MPs of this party are the only people in the parliament who can work. In fact by this decision the Heritage slapped the ANM and those who think that they are doing the orders of the government.
In this case the sequence in the lists does not matter too much. The problem is that Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who has an image of a person who has left the ambitions in the past, is smart and is able to serve the private interests for the sake of the common spirit, should have used his experience to unite the opposition powers. These political powers should have not done this and their negotiations should not be published and the voters should have been informed of their final decision only. Everyone knows that the leaders of the mentioned two political powers are experienced and they are able to find solutions in such hard situations. The parties failed to come to an agreement, even the Heritage expressed discontent concerning the ANM’s pre-elections lists and decided to come up with a separate list, after which it was criticized and the Heritage decided not to participate in the elections, which means that the relations of opposition powers should be revised.
There is no suspect that the Heritage is a real opposition party. The most active and brave MPs of the parliament are the MPs of the Heritage faction. As a fact, when former president Robert Kocharyan organized a reception for MPs and politicians, Zaruhi Postanjyan from the Heritage did not appear in a beautiful dress like the others but in a shirt writing “Freedom to Zhirayr Sefilyan” on it. This is a small but very important detail.
The fact brought by the Heritage stating that many people who endorse the opposition may not endorse Ter-Petrosyan has explanations too. I know people who refused to participate in elections only because of the fact that there were no candidates form the Heritage party in the opposition lists. In other words, the ANM is guilty in the fact that the Heritage has not nominated any representatives to run for the mayoral elections. The Heritage decided to protect its image of opposition power. It was an excellent decision. By not participating in the elections and petitioning people to vote for the ANM the Heritage party refused its votes and thus changed the expectations and calculations of the authorities.
After all the mentioned things it is not fair to say that the Heritage has undermined its image and reputation as a result of refusing to accept the format of the pre-election list suggested by the other opposition power. With this action the Heritage proved that their political party is a serious political power and they respect the ambitions of their partners too, which is a new precedent in our political field.
P.S. The title of this article is the copyright of Hovhannes Tumanyan.