The Armenian national Congress held a demonstration in the Freedom square yesterday, which was in fact the beginning of their pre-election campaign. As it was expected, the ANC has focused on changing the power (“the cleptocratic power”) through the upcoming parliamentary elections. Maybe it is justified from the point of view of strategy as the ANC will be trying to unite the opposition forces in the society. However, it is another issue whether such strategy may work. For example, during yesterday’s demonstration Levon Ter-Petrosyan criticized the “Let’s believe in order to change” slogan of the ruling RPA party in a reasonable manner and said that it is “fouling of belief”. The ANC needs to make sure that the society will believe in their power and team too. Did the opposition protect its promises and followers? Did they chase their mission till the end as they had gathered thousands of people in the streets? During yesterday’s demonstration Levon Ter-Petrosyan announced that in case of forming a strong faction of parliamentarians their first action would be replacement of the president and criminal punishment. The society has reasons not to believe in these promises as during the past four years there have been such promises too. Such promises had been spoken till last year, the time when the opposition entered into dialogue with the authorities. On the other hand, maybe this announcement on the part of Ter-Petrosyan was aimed not at voters but other political powers, namely the Prosperous Armenia party. The meaning of the message is very clear: “help the ANC to have a strong faction and it will replace the president.” In other words, literally the ANC offers the PA “to believe in them, and they will change.” However, in this case the question is that in case if this (informal) cooperation takes place, for the sake of which power will it serve? Will it serve for Levon Ter-Petrosyan or Robert Kocharyan?
