During the pre-election period each party is able to degrade its reputation and image without any external mediation. In the case of the ruling coalition parties there was no need for efforts although the RPA has pretty good black jokes for Prosperous Armenia and vice versa. And both of these parties have jokes for the Legal State. As these jokes are mostly vulgar rather than intellectual I wouldn’t like to speak about these jokes. And the opposition doesn’t waste time and efforts to destroy its own rating and reputation. Moreover, the opposition parties use the old methods of degrading themselves. They all blame each other for cooperating with the government. They are blamed for secrets deals with the government and for taking on the role of mines in the opposition field. The last episode was initiated by Raffi Hovhannisian. He got nominated in the same district as the ANC nominee Nicol Pashinyan. And he did this several minutes after Pashinyan’s nomination. The ANC members have responded this by saying that the Heritage is carrying on the order of the government. He expects to become the fourth member of the coalition, etc. They have sarcastically viewed the call of Raffi Hovhannisian for the opposition. He challenged all the opposition parties to unite, sit around the same table and reasonably decide to nominate one candidate in each district in order to avoid overlap. The ANC and the ARF denied this suggestion of the Heritage in a belated manner. Yesterday, Raffi Hovhannisian dropped out from district 7 he was running in. For its failures the ANC blames the Heritage and so does the latter. But they obviously both got issues. It was so possible that in 2007 the Impeachment alliance would unite with Aram Sargsyan’s Republic party and the New Times but later it turned out that this was cancelled. It’s clear that the votes disappeared. And none of them won any seats in the parliament. Another black cat ran between the Heritage and the ANC during the mayoral elections of Yerevan. The sequence and positions of names on the list caused a lot of disagreements and the Heritage decided not to participate in the mayoral race and encouraged its constituents not to vote for the ANC. It is impossible not to remember the behavior of the Heritage on March 1 of 2008. Together with the protesters we could see the members of the Heritage faction. Armen Martirosyan was even stabbed during these protests and after the treatment of the doctors he was finally able to recover. It seemed that Raffi Hovhannisian was able to form a strong team that would be able to overcome the 5% threshold. However, the latter in his turn, cut the chances of the votes of the Heritage. Larisa Alaverdyan, Anahit Bakhshyan, Armen Martirosyan, who have worked hard in the parliament for four years, were pushed back on the Heritage list. In this case, no clarification works. The voter sees to what extent the leader of the party appreciates the work and efforts of its members and the criteria of selection and grading are not clear. Raffi Hovhannisian’s party list included people, whose profession was not considered a profession prior to the issuance of the list. The same can be said about the Free Democrats. During the merging the list included people, who were not quite known to the public. They also claim to play in the opposition field. This in its turn also caused the confusion of voters. They really want to know what is actually going on. Who is the actual opposition? For this role the main competitors are the ARF, ANC, Heritage. The Prosperous Armenia is also active. Back on November 25, 2011 the ANC expressed its sympathy to the Prosperous Armenia party during its regular rally. Having taken into account the fact that there is eternal conflict between the RPA and PA during his rally Ter-Petrosyan emphasized that he views the PA as a third political force in the political field. The reality showed that the RPA has two irreplaceable allies – PA and the Legal State. And it is going to compete for free and fair elections exclusively with them. And the opposition struggles from within. The opposition parties compete with each other. But the Facebook post, “all the lists will go away” are aimed to appease the hot emotions.
