During a press conference held on Wednesday, leader of the National Democratic Union Vazgen Manukyan offered to accept that the ARP has 200,000 voters which, according to him, will not save or console the Republican Party.
“There are 2 million 200 thousand voters in Armenia, of which 200,000 cast their votes for the Republican Party. Two million don’t accept that party at all and many even hate it. It turned out that they have gone up against the two million in the country with their 200,000 votes and have monopolized power in Armenia. That is simply humiliating, horrible and can’t be long-term,” Manukyan said during the press conference. According to Manukyan, the 450,000 votes of the Republican Party were a result of multiple voting and the use of intimidation.
The National Democratic Party, which didn’t participate in the elections, announces that we shouldn’t be disappointed in the people; the people showed that they are active. It’s just that 25% of the people’s votes disappeared, because the opposition didn’t unite. It is obvious that “the people are as much disgusted with the government as they accuse the opposition. So, the part of the opposition that knew that it wasn’t going to pass but participated in the elections anyway cheated the people in some way.
“The violations become more and more unnoticed year after year for the observer on the sidelines. They say they were distributing electoral bribes with cars. Where is the opposition? It should go, break that car, and either take that person to court or beat him. Why didn’t they scare the person giving bribes? Why didn’t the disappointed citizens beat them on the spot? I don’t understand this. You can’t present intelligent platforms and come to power in any country,” said Manukyan. According to him, the only good thing that is going to follow these National Assembly elections is that some changes will start to take place in the opposition. Manukyan proposed to the “Country of Law”, the ARF, PA and “Heritage” to unite against the Republican Party and fight until the end. Manukyan also said that the 2007 National Assembly elections must be a lesson for the people and the opposition so that the same mistake will not be repeated in 2008 during the presidential elections.
“I am going to run for president and try to unite everyone and achieve victory. We have achieved victory in very desperate conditions,” he said, with the hope that there will be unity before the presidential election. The leader of NDU will present the basis for his hopes a couple of months later, but during the press conference he did mention that some will unite because they were stomped on during the elections, while others will unite because we have freed ourselves from the “Sahakashvili syndrome”.