The political parties are preparing for the upcoming parliamentary elections without additional formalities. If till yesterday only the governmental parties were speaking about elections then yesterday the Heritage has taken the first practical step by not excluding that in 2012 they may participate in the race jointly with the ANC. This was yesterday stated by the president of the board of the Heritage Armen Martirosyan by specially mentioning that this wouldn’t mean that during the presidential elections they’re going to endorse the first RA President Levon Ter-Petrosyan. “In my personal view, you can’t enter the same river twice,” Armen Martirosyan told journalists. “Especially given that Heritage has its own candidate.” Hovannisian will run for president in the next ballot due in 2013, he said. The ANC didn’t respond to this statement by mentioning that they’re going to avoid interpretation as long as they don’t have the official standpoint of the Heritage party. The response is not very hard to assume. Relations between Heritage and Ter-Petrosyan’s Armenian National Congress (HAK) alliance have substantially cooled since then. In a speech at a Heritage congress on July 10, Hovannisian stated that Ter-Petrosyan, his successor Robert Kocharyan and the current President Serzh Sargsyan share responsibility for Armenia’s political and socioeconomic problems. The Heritage leader indicated that the country’s leading opposition forces may well fail to agree on a single presidential candidate. Most probably from the Congress they might say that the ANC is striving to attain extraordinary elections and the Heritage by these statements is helping the government. They may claim that the Heritage is thus denying the possibility of extraordinary elections. Besides that the Heritage initially excludes the possibility of endorsing Ter-Petrosyan. That may also serve a reason for the ANC to exclude this cooperation because from the ANC they will explain to the Heritage that the participation in the NA elections is only means to reach change of government. And the change of government can only be headed by Ter-Petrosyan. It means that under these conditions and the behavior of the ANC the expected cooperation should be excluded. In the meantime the realities of the present come to prove that despite the majority of the society is pro-opposition the chances of the opposition to win elections are reducing if they participate separately. Of course, it doesn’t mean that the ANC and the Heritage are compatible to each other but if they run separately they will be racing against each other thus splitting the ballots of the electorate. Yesterday’s statement of Martirosyan must be welcomed because the debates and discussions around this issue in the near future will bring certain clarity to the matter as well as the future style of the behavior of the opposition.
