Yesterday evening the several month long tension between the PA and the RPA came to a solution. Headed by the president of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan yesterday’s session of the Republican Party discussed and adopted a declaration, which should be signed today. According to that project during the upcoming presidential elections the coalition will come up with a joint presidential candidate in the person of Serzh Sargsyan. In the text of the declaration of the coalition there is a very strange formulation. “The parties of the Coalition are united in meeting these changes and in the upcoming parliamentary elections will not strive to increase their political weight through contesting against each other or changing correlation of forces within the Coalition. The Coalition partners are confident that sustained implementation of the reforms will further increase the political role of the Coalition and public trust toward it, resulting in the amplified participation of the Coalition at the RA National Assembly after the parliamentary elections.” What does this mean? It may cause various interpretations. First of all, how is it possible to determine the setup of forces 1 year prior to elections. As it’s known in Armenia elections are determined by the voters of Armenia. At least formally, but this provision of the constitution still works. Or perhaps this statement means that in the next parliament the Legal State, PA and RPA will make coalition again. If it’s so then this might be considered an agreement or declaration to rig the upcoming parliamentary elections. Otherwise, how can the government predict that in one year the voters will give their votes to them in the same proportions? Perhaps with the wish of the voters the balance between the coalition parties may change. The chairman of the PA Gagik Tsarukyan stated that they would be competing to get 50+1% of the votes, hasn’t he? Are then not going to compete anymore? Perhaps. A few days ago, the Legal State chairman Artur Baghdasaryan sincerely stated, “we cannot gain 50+1% of the ballots. Today it’s pretty difficult and we will be sufficed by more modest percentage.” Perhaps during this period the PA as well realized that the award of 50+1% only belongs to the RPA. Or if they are not going to compete with each other to increase their ballots then who else are they going to compete with? Will they do it at the expense of the opposition? Needless to say, in parliament the opposition already has minor representation and this doesn’t actually express the opposition moods of the society. And the non-parliamentary opposition has sufficient electorate to at least have several seats in the parliament. And if this declaration really means that the coalition forces are not going to compete then the government has decided to give fewer seats to the opposition in the next parliamentary elections 2012. But can anybody be sure that in the next parliament the opposition wouldn’t make majority in the parliament. Regardless of the coalition declarations in Armenian the social discontent decreases day by day. And ultimately, the dissatisfied people wouldn’t care about the verbal or written declarations of thee government. And even the lofty walls of the government and the administrative levers wouldn’t be able to restrain the mass of people. Even the election code wouldn’t change the situation. The paragraph of the declaration on the presidential election is also strange. If the coalition is going to run with a single president, as they declare, then why are they so sure that it’s going to be them. Isn’t the to-be signed text only a political declaration? Thus it cannot be legally binding. What would stop the PA to endorse another candidate, for example, Robert Kocharyan, who is behind the PA? And if the RPA was trying to receive exact guarantees from the PA then the text of this declaration doesn’t solve this matter. The ARF didn’t stay in the coalition and deflected the joint declaration. So the same thing may happen now. At any rate, during the last 2-3 weeks the struggle between the RPA and the PA was to find a joint agreement to endorse Serzh Sargsyan. Sargsyan finally reached his goal despite the assumptions that Tsarukyan and Robert Kocharyan are categorically against that. It is hard to say as a result of what negotiations and talks the text of the declaration was born. There is an opinion that as a redress for the declaration the RPA will take certain compromises and it’s not included that the “victim” of that may be prime minister Tigran Sargsyan, whose post will be given to the PA. It’s worth recalling that if in the past two weeks the tension was between the RPA and the PA then during the last week the tension was tangible even within the parties. In the RPA the loyalists of Serzh Sargsyan had the opinion that the PA should deflect from the coalition. And if it doesn’t deflect voluntarily then it should be “invited out” because it is the RPA that makes the majority and the rest of the parties of the coalition are invited. The supporters of this view were sure that if the PA is not ousted from the coalition then the PA will deflect by its own initiative closer to elections in the near 8-9 months. Besides that, the Republicans are already sure that Kocharyan will soon conduct an open political activity and it’s not excluded that he will submit of the role of the PA chairman. The twilights will temporarily settle in the PA. Yesterday’s statement will allow the members of this party breathe freely at least several months. They already imagined what they’d face if they had deflected from the coalition. As a result the Legal State didn’t win anything. Moreover, from now on this party will become most probably the target of the PA hits. The Legal State was more than the RPA interested in the deflection of the PA from the coalition.
P.S. Below please see the text of the coalition declaration, which was adopted during yesterday’s RPA yesterday’s session.