Based on the nominations of the opposition candidates in the single-mandate districts it looks clear that the Armenian opposition will not be united and cooperative with each other during the parliamentary elections. Or, similarly, it won’t be jointly run against the government and for the sake of the opposition victory.
In numerous single-mandate districts the opposition candidates are running against each other. In most of the cases, the candidates of the ANC and Heritage and ANC, ARF are running against each other. There is no district, where the Heritage would be competing with the ARF. The recent such precedent became known yesterday where in Malatia-Sebastia district 7, ANC candidate Nicol Pashinyan will be running against Heritage chairman Raffi Hovhannisyan. And it seems that these two politicians will not be competing against the government representatives but will race against each other. The first opinion can be formed after the release of the information. Alexanyan with his levers will provide his votes and the votes of the opposition will be split and vanish between Hovhannisyan and Pashinyan. “I prepared this speech after I was nominated in constituency No 7 and I decided to publicize it after the Central Election Commission issued the list of nominees. Great was my surprise when I learnt that Raffi Hovhannisyan (Leader of the opposition Heritage party) was running in the same constituency with me. I went to the CEC to submit the documents for nomination at 4:50 p.m. and left it at about 5:00 p.m. I did not find Raffi Hovannisian’s name among the candidates. I was even more surprised to learn about the self-nomination of the Heritage leader. The information became available through the media and not by the party’s press service of the CEC. I believe that the mission of a political figure is not to change something but to create favorable conditions for changes, not to grant freedom but to enable its acquisition for every and each citizen and my nomination is intended to provide a similar alternative," mentioned Pashinyan in a statement. Heritage party founding leader Raffi Hovannisian yesterday declared that to the last moment of his nomination for a parliamentary seat he did not know that Nikol Pashinyan was going to run in the same single-mandate constituency. During yesterday’s press conference, Hovannisian said his choice fell upon constituency N7 and he decided to nominate himself as an alternative rival to the pro-government candidate Samvel Alexanyan. Besides, the relatives of Hovannisian’s wife live in that area. In reply to the allegations that by his nomination the Heritage leader was executing an order, Mr. Hovannisian said, “I received the order from my conscience, faith and love.” Then he advised the authors of these accusations to be cautious not to become clients themselves. Raffi Hovannisian says it is time all candidates running in majority constituencies sat around a table and nominated a joint candidate in each constituency. Otherwise, the opposition electorate will again split over the choice of candidates. "Hard times are awaiting us," said the Heritage leader. At the same time, Mr. Hovannisian is hopeful that on May 7 Armenians will wake up in a new Armenia. There are similar examples in many other districts. For example, district 12 of Erebuni, where Heritage MP Anahit Bakhshyan is running against ANC member, Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s nephew Tigran Ter-Petrosyan. In Arabkir, Heritage MP Zaruhi Postanjyan is running against ANC member Aram Manukyan, in Ajapnyak Heritage MP Armen Martirosyan is racing against ANC member Avet Poghosyan. In district 30 of Vanadzor ANC member Ashot Manukyan is racing against Garnik Sahakyan from Heritage, or in 38 district of Syunik ARF member Gagik Gevorgyan is running against ANC member Davit Matevosyan and so on. Why can’t the opposition unite after so many years and efforts? Don’t you think that the splintering of the opposition works on behalf of the government? All the opposition parties are blaming each other for not being able to unite. “For us it has always been preferable to work and run jointly and collectively but you should find the culprits of failure outside the Heritage party. It is not the fault of the Heritage that other parties merely don’t wish to unite and collaborate. They don’t keep each other aware of their steps and plans. We find out about each other’s plan by mass media. Or we never find it out. In this regard, I’d like to remember the mayoral elections of 2009. It was when instead of uniting and jointly running the opposition parties issued their lists via mass media, which specifically meant the following, “This is our list. You want it or not, it’s up to you.” Same way now, the candidates of the 41 districts are announced, and we were merely informed of them via mass media. Therefore, if this the style of work and collaboration in that case, let nobody blame the Heritage for nominating its candidates without knowing or having any information where we could avoid overlap,” yesterday told us Heritage MP Styopa Safaryan. But has the Heritage consulted the ANC when forming its election lists. In this case, Safaryan says that when they announced their majoritarian list the ANC didn’t consider it to avoid overlap. And the secretary of the ARF faction Artyusha Shahbazyan found it meaningless to cooperate with the other opposition forces just for show-off. In his words, if their plans don’t match how can they cooperate? “People can be from the opposition camp but may have differing ideologies and ideas. How can we endorse someone, who has differing and contrasting ideas about the resolution of the NKR conflict, about the Armenian-Turkish relations, economic and other matters? How can we tell our structure to go endorse the candidate, who is so far from our ideology? Such cooperation cannot be mechanical,” says Shahbazyan. Thus, the fight against the government, revolution or the conduct of free and fair elections has not become a joint field for opposition parties. And the impression is that in Armenia the opposition forces are not struggling against the government but against each other. However, they formally deny this variant. “Absolutely not. If the ANC continues launching a campaign against the Heritage of course we will respond to them at a not very high level. But we won’t make the ANC our target. Our target is the government and we are running against the government,” says Safaryan adds, “but I was bewildered about the fact that nobody has ever noted that in districts where Heritage nominated its candidates the ANC nominated its own candidates. I don’t know why but all this noise was made in Malatia-Sebastia community.” These parliamentary elections are pre-electoral with their essence closer to the presidential elections 2013. And based on the current unity of the opposition we can guess how united it will be during the presidential race.