ANC Leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan announced at the rally on Friday, that along with other demands, he intends to raise the issue of the RA President Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation, once they gain “weighty parliamentary fraction” after parliamentary elections.
“Considering that Serzh Sargsyan occupied the presidential seat through rough violations of the Election Code, election fraud, mass violence, and the massacre carried out towards the peaceful citizens, he has to be brought to the criminal responsibility and the issue of his resignation should be raised,” said the ANC Leader. In fact, nobody doubts that the ANC is going to have a parliamentary representation in the National Assembly, after May 6 elections. However, it is not clear yet how the out-parliamentary faction ANC is going to have a representation, when it is composed of more than 10 political parties, and whether it will have a “weighty parliamentary fraction” in order to carry out the mentioned project. Even if it does not have the planned representation, the ARF and party Heritage will still remain in the National Assembly as a classic parliamentary opposition. In the course of 3-4 years those two parties have performed their out-parliamentary and parliamentary activities, speeches, polls, legislative initiatives and different actions of protest referring basically towards the coalition and particularly and particularly to the ruling Republican party. ARF and Heritage have often cooperated around those processes. Those two parties have criticized the economic and social conditional of the country, foreign policy, and the policy of performed in other spheres. It has the similar image in case of the coalition party Prosperous Armenia, which is known to be the major contestant of the ruling RPA. Whenever the inter-parliamentary relations are becoming tough, Prosperous Armenia is criticizing the authorities without mentioned any exact addressee. Yesterday we tried to find out from those parties whether they will raise the issue the RA President Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation in the next parliament and will cooperate with the ANC, which has already announced its intention about the President’s resignation. Artyusha Shahbazyan, secretary of the ARF faction, told us yesterday during the telephone conversation, that he does not want to comment on such an issue as long as the election results are not revealed. Ruben Hakobyan, deputy chairman of the party Heritage did not even want to answer our questions. Earlier, when the ANC was raising the issue of government change and Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation, those two parties were simply making avoiding comments. They would occasionally speak about the government change, but never demand Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation. In such cases, ARF, for instance would announce that they want a complete change of the government. When the Armenian-Turkish protocol was being published, they even demanded the RA Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Nalbandyan’s resignation. They also severely criticized the RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, and even once they raised the issue of his incredibility. However, they never demanded S. Sargsyan’s resignation or his impeachment. Several years ago there were publications that under the pressure of the RA second President Robert Kocharyan, the Prosperous Armenia has elaborated a secret project about Serzh Sargsyan’s impeachment. There was an opinion about the Prosperous Armenia, ARF faction and several MPs from the RPA are able to realize that project together. The conflict of the last few years between the RPA and Prosperous Armenia was also explained by such concerns. That is to say, not only all the political parties should express willingness about S. Sargsyan’s resignation, but also should raise that demand in order to establish a new government. In the opposite case the impeachment of the Prime Minister or the Minister of Foreign Affairs will not be considered as the government change. Moreover, during the previous years, Serzh Sargsyan himself terminated several high officials, such as the NA Speaker, Head of Police, Minister of Finance, Minister of Justice, etc. Such changes, however, never contributed to a change in relevant spheres. The President just solved staff management and government security issues. Nevertheless will the opposition parties cooperate around the issue s carried out by the ANC? Without referring to President, A. Shahbazyan answered again, that that they will raise the issue of complete change of the government. Will they cooperate with political parties which would have the same platforms as they do? Zaruhi Postanjyan, from Heritage answered that they are going to struggle both for the change of the government, S. Sargsyan’s resignation, and for fair investigation of all the crimes, committed during the last few years. They will cooperate with all those parties which will follow this goal in their activities. Although it is not clear yet whether the first 20 candidates included into the proportional party list of the Heritage will agree with Zaruhi Postanjyan. As for the Prosperous Armenia, Chairman Gagik Tsarukyan and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Vardan Oskanyan, who is also on the second post in the proportional list of the Prosperous Armenia, they criticized the authorities in their last congress for the current social-economic situation and other existing injustice in the country. The Prosperous Armenia is the major contestant of the RPA, because the party has the second biggest faction representation of deputies, possesses huge financial resources. It is also known as the most active political party supporting to Robert Kocharyan’s return to politics. Besides, the Prosperous Armenia has declared for several times that it intends to receive 50+1 percent of votes in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Will the Prosperous Armenia decide to raise Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation issue after all the above mentioned terms and conditions are satisfied, especially, when last year Levon Ter-Petrosyan called the party for indirect cooperation? When Tsarukyan himself was asked whether they are going to support Levon-Ter-Petrosyan in 2013 presidential elections, he said “I’ll answer that question next time.” So, will the Prosperous Armenia try to raise the issue of the government change or he will remain faithful to the coalition memorandum, in case the party receives 50+1 in the parliament? Khachik Galstyan, press secretary of the Prosperous Armenia, answered our question as follows: “now I don’t want to answer any hypothetical question about future. Currently the Prosperous Armenia is engaged in preparatory activities of the campaign. The voters will decide how the future parliament will be composed.”