Former Prime Ministers of Armenia Hrant Bagratyan and Khosrov Harutyunyan are current leaders of the “Azatutyun” (Freedom) and Armenian Christian Democratic Union political parties respectively. During a press conference at the “Hayeli” club on Friday, journalists tried to find out how each party leader is going to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Kh. Harutyunyan informed that his political party will participate alone because it is against pre-electoral alliances.
“They are “phony, political marriages that, as a rule, end with the post-election, rough divorces”.
However, Harutyunyan didn’t exclude the cooperation with different political parties after the elections based on ideology. He also said that it is possible that he puts up his nomination in the majority electoral system as well.
As for H. Bagratyan, perhaps he won’t participate in the upcoming elections because he is unsatisfied with the current oppositional field.
“Some oppositionists are simply working as the opposition for the authorities,” said Bagratyan, clarifying that the reason for that is the lack of ideological opinions; otherwise, according to Bagratyan, the opposition had to unite. Taking all this into consideration, the former prime minister supposes that “the elections will be conducted rather calmly and in the end the authorities will win…Unfortunately, the authorities are going to determine that the opposition gets 20-25% of the seats in the parliament. So, the opposition is fighting among themselves in the elections and not against the authorities.”
Bagratyan also mentioned that some political parties have already asked him and Harutyunyan to unite, but didn’t mention any names. However, there is a political power that has the chances of becoming the real opposition. H. Bagratyan recalled “Aylentrank” (Alternative) as one of those parties and said: “I hope that it will become the real opposition.”