During the last week it became clear that the negotiations of the oppositional parties regarding formation of an alliance failed. As a result about a dozen of oppositional parties will separately participate in elections.
1 or 2 days after the failure on March the chairman of the New Times Party, Aram Karapetyan announced that there are parties in Armenia, which “pretend as oppositionists but work for the government.” The fact that we have such politicians is not a surprise for us. A lot has been spoken about that. However Karapetyan’s announcement is remarkable because he promised to mention the names of those, who are fake oppositionists. He also mentioned when exactly he’s going to publicize those names. That’s when he’ll have access on TV. Prior to that Karapetyan doesn’t wish to give names, however clearly refers to certain opposition representatives.
Yesterday we asked Karapetyan why he decided to speak about those things now. “I think it’s the time to mention the names of those, who are going to cut deals with government,” said Karapetyan. Didn’t he know the names of those fake oppositionists before? To this question Karapetyan answered, “I didn’t know that such things would happen. And when the format didn’t work out we got more interested and found out new details. The New Times Party leader has also announced that he finds a part of members of the Republic, Liberal-Progressive Party, Heritage and ANM parties a real opposition. Among the real oppositionists he hasn’t mentioned Artashes Geghamyan and Artur Baghdasaryan. We tried to find out whether he really missed them accidentally or did it on purpose. It turned out that Karapetyan has never considered Baghdasaryan a real opposition. And as the Legal State has titled itself as an opposition party it turns out that Baghdasaryan is among the ones, who according to Karapetyan, are not real oppositionists. Karapetyan hasn’t even mentioned Geghamyan among the oppositionists. The New times leader has said that they have always tried to undermine the opposition field and “we even went to the court”. Yesterday Karapetyan gave the following answer to our question. “I haven’t said such a thing yet. I didn’t say any names. I only said that there are such people. I will openly mention the names of the ones, who are really sold to the government. I am not going to leave any unanswered questions.” It’s obvious if Karapetyan mentions the names those will start to accuse Karapetyan of being a spy on their own part. “If they can say let them say,” answered Karapetyan. As a result during the campaign the oppositionists will run against each other but not the government. “You only speak about opposition but I’ve said so much about the government on my March 2 press conference. Why don’t you speak about that?” he asked and also added, “if the person has to say something he may regardless of who it concerns.”
The reason why don’t write about Karapetyan’s criticism to the government is that it’s not going to be interesting because everybody does. Nevertheless according to Karapetyan there is a group of people in Armenia, who are really interested in the future of Armenia. And there is also a group, who doesn’t want anything to be changed. He thinks that such people belong to both government and opposition. “Do you remember that it was Geghamyan, who went first on his own? At least this is true, isn’t it? At the end Demirchyan stayed alone. So it means that we don’t have a joint list because of these people. In this case it means that it’s the fault of these people, which hindered the process of creating a joint proportional list,” said Karapetyan. Do those facts mean that the mentioned people cut deals with the government? “This much for now. I’ll tell you the rest during elections,” answered the chair of the New Times and added, “we realized that the alliance didn’t come true because of two people – Geghamyan and Demirchyan. They were the ones, who have first announced about refusing the suggestion of forming a bloc. (it’s their business. I don’t want to say anything bad). There was also the third person – Vazgen Manukyan, who during the negotiations has adopted a very interesting attitude and at the end as you noticed he refused to join the format. We may state that because of these people the opposition bloc didn’t come true. Is that right?”
P.S. Aram Karapetyan has also announced that the H2 and Kentron TV channels have received an order from “Armen Gevorgyan and through Victor Soghomonyan” to raise the rating of two oppositionists. During his conversation with us yesterday Karapetyan said that he doesn’t consider one of the those oppositionists a real opposition (perhaps he refers to Artur Baghdasaryan) and the next one is a fake oppositionist.