By Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenian communists are determined not to ally themselves with other political forces in next year’s parliamentary elections, their leader Ruben Tovmasian said on Thursday, stressing that they don’t want ‘to share their loss or victory.’ “We had been talked into giving our support to groups and parties we had nothing in common with before,” Tovmasian said. “Now if we lose we will accept this loss as ours, and if we manage to get into the parliament, it will become a huge step of the Communist Party.”
Tovmasian attributed the communist fiasco at the 2003 parliamentary elections, when the party failed to win a single seat in the National Assembly for the first time in 87 years, to its cooperation with different opposition forces at different stages of the election campaign. Among those supported by the Communist Party of Armenia (HKK) then were opposition leaders Stepan Demirchian and Artashes Geghamian. The party had also joined the so-called 17+1 opposition alliance.
“That cooperation completely disorientated our electorate,” Tovmasian said, adding that they also want to field their own candidates at the 2008 presidential elections ‘to redress those mistakes’.
The HKK that had its last presidential candidate in 1998 suffered several major splits after the death of its respected leader Sergey Badalian in 1999, which gave rise to several parties calling themselves communists. Recently, Tovmasian brushed aside the calls of the splinter groups to join efforts to succeed in the upcoming elections.
The leader of the staunchly pro-Russian party that stands for the restoration of state control of the economy, says that the only condition on which they can agree to form an alliance with other forces today is: “If they agree to struggle for social justice, against corruption and criminals, to improve the lives of ordinary people, to push for Armenia’s joining the Russia-Belarus union.”
(Photolur photo: Ruben Tovmasian.)