As it is known, the head of the NA “Heritage” bloc, Raffi Hovhannisyan has submitted a bill to the National Assembly on recognizing the Nagorno Karabakh Republic by Armenia.
It is clear that the official recognition of Karabakh will not give anything to Armenia except for a number of losses. Fortunately, the representatives of the other factions have announced that they are not going to support that bill. The representatives of ARP, PA, ARF and RL parties have already announced that they are not going to support the mentioned bill. “In fact, we are not supporting that bill”, said the deputy chair of “Rule of Law” party, Mher Shahgeldyan in “Friday” club and added, “Today the negotiations are in process. We find that the problem should be solved in consideration of this factor”. Mr. Shahgeldyan said that it is impossible to solve problems with such decisions and added, “Let us not forget that the well-known solution of the biggest problem still exists, which is known to everyone”. However, there are issues, concerning which the RL, “Heritage” and the other powers that are considered to be opposition may act jointly. A number of opposition parties are having meetings at different cafes and trying to figure out a joint stance concerning the upcoming presidential elections. RL leader Arthur Baghdasaryan participated in a recent opposition meeting, which took place two days ago. Stepan Demirchyan, Artashes Geghamyan, Shavarsh Kocharyan, Manuk Gasparyan, Lyudmila Sargsyan and others were present at the mentioned meeting too. This time the representatives of ANM, “Alternative”, “Republic” and “Heritage” parties did not take part. M. Shahgeldyan said that he had information that ANM was going to take part in such formats in the future too. The RL deputy chair did not inform any details concerning the recent meeting and said that the RL had its own candidate to nominate during the presidential elections. According to Shahgeldyan, A. Baghdasaryan has all the qualifications to be nominated. He also said that when time “comes and the consultations are over”, the RL will inform about its view. The RL deputy chair said that their party was an oppositional branch and assured that would not collaborate with the authorities during the elections. He says that it is possible that the opposition may agree to run jointly and work out such tactical steps to run not with one candidate only, but with two or three candidates. We wander what the RL representatives, whose leader has written a book about Levon Ter-Petrosyan, think about the possibility of Ter-Petrosyan’s rival during the elections. Yesterday we could not get a concrete answer to this question. Shahgeldyan only said that “L. Ter-Petrosyan is the first president of Armenia and a great politician”, and that the RL will speak its opinion only after he makes a decision to run. We tried to concretize and said that some parties have informed that if the first president runs they will back him, and others, for instance Marxist David Hakobyan, have said that they will be happy for that, “Shavarsh Kocharyan and friends” have already joined the governmental media campaign against the possible nomination of the first president, the ARP is going to change its strategy in case Ter-Petrosyan runs, and asked about the RL’s approach to that issue and what they were going to do in case the first president decided to run. Answering to our question M. Shahgeldyan said, “We can answer to such questions only after Ter-Petrosyan announces about his decision to run. Levon Ter-Petrosyan is the first president of our Republic and a great politician. Today people are discussing whether he will run or not. We will inform about our official position only after Ter-Petrosyan announces about his decision to be nominated”. Yesterday the RL deputy chair said that the RL general meeting definitely would take place at the end of October. He suggested to wait more for the purpose of getting concrete answers to the questions concerning the upcoming presidential elections. In fact, M. Shahgeldyan did not refute the fact that the fact they are waiting is connected with the uncertainty of the first president’s future steps. As expected, at the end of September it will become clear whether the first president will run or not.