Pundit Armen Badalian tells “Zhamanak” that only the following three political forces can be deemed “serious contenders” of the May 31 municipal elections in Yerevan: the opposition Armenian National Congress (HAK), the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) and the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK). Badalian predicts that Artur Baghdasarian’s Orinats Yerkir and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) will fail to clear the 7 percent vote threshold for winning seats in Yerevan’s Council of Elders.
“I don’t think that the opposition electorate will vote for Dashnaktsutyun because [the party] is ideologically different from the Armenian National Congress and has its own electorate,” another analyst, Manvel Sargsian, tells “Taregir.” Sargsian says the authorities will again use their “administrative resources” to ensure a desired election outcome. “The rise in repressions shows that the balance of forces is in not in the authorities’ favor,” he says.
Gurgen Arsenian, the leader of the pro-establishment United Labor Party, claims in an interview with “Chorrord Ishkhanutyun” that for Dashnaktsutyun, Turkish-Armenian relations was an excuse to “dodge responsibility” for the government’s economic policies. “Now they are not responsible for incoming consequences,” he says. “In about six months economic policy will become the number one issue on the agenda. The situation will significantly deteriorate. Right now the public does not take their opposition stance seriously because they have been in government for ten years.”
“Hayots Ashkhar” quotes Vahram Atanesian, chairman of the Nagorno-Karabakh parliament’s foreign relations committee, as urging opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian to public acknowledge that he continues to support a Karabakh peace plan proposed by the mediators in 1997. Atanesian says Ter-Petrosian has no moral right to urge the Karabakh Armenians to oppose the mediators’ existing proposals that recognize their “right to self-determination” and are therefore more favorable to the Armenian side than the 1997 plan.
“Yerkir” suspects that Armenia and Turkey have reached “some agreement” on normalizing their relations are reluctant to publicizing it for fear of a domestic backlash. The Dashnaktsutyun weekly is puzzled by Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian’s remark that Turkish-Armenian roadmap is just a timetable for further negotiations.
(Aghasi Yenokian)