Platform 2

20/06/2009

Last week we published information on the RPA’s efforts to recruit independent MPs in their faction and informed that the RPA had handed out documents to them to sign before joining their faction. However, the RPA’s efforts are not successful and according to our information only Hrant Vardanyan’s son (Karen Vardanyan) has joined the RPA faction. The process of recruiting the independent MPs is slow and this is the reason why the RPA has initiated to give these ready documents to them to sign. According to our information, in parallel with the RPA the Prosperous Armenia is working to recruit the independent MPs as well. According to our well informed sources, during meetings with the mentioned MPs and their friends Gagik Tsarukyan tries to convince them if that they continue this way, they will lose their businesses. Other supporters of the PA are working on this too and they bring the example of the recent draft law on tax collection and assure that the adoption of the law was stopped mainly due to Tsarukyan’s efforts. In a word, the purpose of these efforts is to unite the MPs, who have power but still don’t support the authorities to join them in order to implement their plans of bringing Robert Kocharyan back to politics. According to our information, they will publish this information this fall.

Our sources of information from the PA say that it is not excluded that it may be done through giving the honorable position of the PA party leader to Kocharyan, which was planned to be done several months ago but did not happen. In other words, in parallel with the discussions and processes of establishing a common big platform of the opposition, processes are happening in the political elite as well. Furthermore, the ARF is now actively discussing its future policy and the issue of its political affiliation for the future. There are people in the ARF board, who say that they should wait for a good moment and join the processes initiated by Vardan Oskanyan to support the process of Kocharyan’s return to politics, but there are people who think that at least they have the opportunity to join the real opposition and save their reputation. As for the most active participant of this process, i.e. the Prosperous Armenia party, we will discuss the details in the next edition.