The parliamentary member of the Heritage party, Zaruhi Postanjyan stated, “We witnessed at the Yerevan Mayor election that the Armenian National Congress is not a real political force. There is a huge oppositional mass electorate in Yerevan. The election, of course, was rigged but the opposition was unable to take care for its votes. And the ANC wasn’t able to pass the test of claiming to be the only oppositional force in the country.” In order to temper this approach Postanjyan mentioned that they agreed that the votes were falsified and also mentioned that a great number of oppositionists didn’t go to the polls. “The votes received by the Congress are quite worrisome,” said Postanjyan. “All of us must be worried that the ANC has not yet established itself as a political force and does not enjoy the trust of the opposition electorate. Such trust requires daily hard work, rather than mere words.” Postanjyan claimed that the ANC did not fare better also because of a lack of young candidates on its electoral slate. “You can’t act in obsolete formats, with obsolete lists and, let them not take offense, with obsolete people. And this is already an objective index,” she said. Postanjyan also spoke about the statement of the chairman of the Republic party Aram Sargsyan, who claimed that after these elections the oppositional field is cleansed. Zaruhi Postanjyan, made the point that the ANC failed to convince many Yerevan residents, who had voted for Ter-Petrosyan in 2008, to take part in the latest elections, whereas the RPA and Prosperous Armenia managed to get most of their supporters to the polls. The CEC figures and anecdotal evidence show that voter turnout was significantly lower than during the presidential election of February 2008. This might explain why the ANC garnered, in absolute terms, much fewer votes than Ter-Petrosyan did as a presidential candidate. “This is the result of wrong calculations made by all of us and the Armenian National Congress in the first instance,” said Armen Martirosyan, the nominal leader of the Heritage faction in parliament. To the question of the reporter of Radio Liberty as to whether the Heritage does daily work to activate the society Postanjyan gave the most shocking answer, “In the morning of March 1 and after it, Levon Ter-Petrosyan had to be with the people, regardless any kind of home arrest, as the Heritage did. We have to examine and find the mistakes, in order not to repeat them in the further struggle. That’s what I mean by daily work,” stated Zaruhi Postanjyan. “There is a controllable and a scared sphere, which does what it is ordered to do, the best proof of which is the election in several communities of Yerevan, where they needed no technology, because though there was some oppositional electorate there, nevertheless the great part of the citizens did what the government ordered them to do,” stated Martirosyan. Regarding self-criticism Martirosyan said, “We are really self-criticizing ourselves… If we were able to conduct a civilized campaign there would be no collision between the ANC and the Heritage.” According to Martirosyan, the oppositional press insulted the Heritage party for about a week. And there were political figures that represented it as public demand. Many demanded from the Heritage to lay down the NA mandates. But time showed that taking part in the NA works is more expedient than laying down the mandates. As of the fact that the ANC is refusing its city council mandates Martirosyan said, “If the Congress is not taking the mandates and the oppositional group of our population doesn’t have any representation in the city council, this becomes really worrisome.” Postanjyan claimed that the ANC did not fare better also because of a lack of young candidates on its electoral slate, who would be able to activate the electorate and be willing to change the situation. “You can’t act in obsolete formats, with obsolete lists and, let them not take offense,” with obsolete people,” she said. Let us mention that the ANC representatives didn’t comment on the Heritage statements.
