The RPA’s board session resulted in a memorandum to be signed by the three coalition parties of Armenia. Before the RPA board meeting the RPA head and the RA president Serzh Sargsyan met with the leaders of the PA and Legal State parties to agree the text of the announcement, which was later approved by the RPA board. In the end of the one and half page document there is a note, which is not understandable. “On the threshold of new changes the coalition parties are united and do not pursue a goal to raise their political role in the upcoming parliamentary elections due to competition with each other or changing the balance of the parties within the coalition. The coalition partners believe that the decisiveness of changes will raise the political role of the coalition and the society’s trust to it, resulting in the growth of the coalition’s representation in the RA National Assembly. Furthermore, the political coalition will endorse one joint candidate during the upcoming presidential elections. The endorsed joint candidate will be the incumbent president, which will create guarantees for the future continuation of the changes and the stable development of the country during the coming 5 years,” writes the memo. The provisions on unity and agreement not to fight against each other can be implemented and fulfilled only in case of joint participation in parliamentary elections. In other words, this should be a joint list with the same proportion of representation of the coalition parties in the parliament. Otherwise there is no meaning because if these parties run in elections separately, they will have to do their best not to collect fewer votes than they have now. This means there will not be elections and the authorities will divide the power between the coalition parties. The most surprising thing in this announcement concerns the presidential election 2013, in which the coalition does not exclude the possibility of holding extraordinary presidential elections. If the “incumbent president” phrase is not followed by the name of Serzh Sargsyan, it means the next candidate may be somebody else. The text of the announcement does not have any other logical meaning. Serzh Sargsyan has the powers to be the president till April 2013 if there are no extraordinary elections as a result of certain processes (revolution or the developments envisaged by the Constitution). In other words, the coalition’s new memorandum will decide the results of the upcoming elections.
