For this purpose, the US wants to support its candidate to be nominated as president of Armenia. This candidate will definitely be head of “Rule of Law” party, Arthur Baghdasaryan. At the same time, “Rule of Law” may start a coalition with Aram Sargsyan and Stepan Demirchyan to be strong enough for the competition. We can’t really predict anything. The US is interested in A. Baghdasaryan because it is very easy to manipulate him: he is young, doesn’t know a lot about the Karabagh conflict and will do whatever the U.S. says if elected.
Now both the “Republic” party and “ADP” assure that they are not negotiating with “Rule of Law”.
The leader of “Republic” party, Aram Sargsyan assures that since A. Baghdasaryan resigned from the speaker’s position they haven’t discussed any issues concerning cooperation. “But this doesn’t mean that we are not aware of what the other is doing and there may be situations when we will come to an arrangement and cooperate”, says Mr. Sargsyan. Aram Sargsyan says that they are ready to cooperate with any party that has the principles that they have. As for “Rule of Law”, A. Sargsyan says that their principles are the same.
As for ADP, the board secretary Stepan Minasyan says that they can even participate in elections alone. However, he doesn’t exclude any possibilities of collaborating with “Rule of Law”. “I don’t exclude collaboration and other relative procedures with them in the future. If there are other powers that have the same principles and goals, then we will work with them too”, assures S. Minasyan. Furthermore, he said that there have been cases when they proposed issues in the parliament along with “Rule of Law”. “Even though we collaborate with “Rule of Law” in the parliament, that still doesn’t mean that we are ready to participate in elections like they want us to”, says Stepan Minasyan. According to him, these days they are busy with organizing. “We think that the Armenian president should not be elected with the support of any other powers. The Armenian president must be elected by the public vote of Armenians only and that is our goal”, assures Stepan Minasyan. It is said that after the 2003 elections, Stepan Demirchyan feels like he is the only oppositional leader chosen by the people and worries that he will no longer be an oppositional leader if someone else comes into the field. In regard to this, we asked Mr. Minasyan what they would do if people don’t follow Demirchyan any more, to which he answered, “Leaders are not elected in offices and through voting. Only the people can decide who the oppositional leader is. Leaders elected in that way cause trouble for the nation. But if Armenians target someone else as their leader, we will agree with them”, said Mr. Minasyan and added that people had not changed their approach yet and still considered S. Demirchyan as their oppositional leader. Aram Sargsyan assures that he doesn’t have any political ambitions and says that people can fix their approach only when being mobilized. “If the time comes, we will not wait for suggestions, we will mobilize people ourselves. If there is a need, we will be the first, if there is a need, we will be the last”, said Mr. Sargsyan. Yesterday we called head of “Rule of Law” faction Heghine Bisharyan and asked questions, to which she answered only by saying, “I don’t know…maybe…” Anything is possible in Armenia’s political field now, especially when there are such unpredictable politicians in the field like Arthur Baghdasaryan.