“The format 3+1 is good with us,” RPA deputy chairman Armen Ashotyan said to www.aravot.am, commenting on the joining of 4 political forces – Armenian National Congress (ANC), Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), Heritage Party and Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) – to the Document on Establishing a Joint Staff for Public Supervision Over the Election.
He stated, “The perception that those 4 parties are allies and see only one rival, namely the RPA, is very superstitious. As a result of a deep analysis, as the former Minister of Foreign Affairs would say, from the perspective of a political scientist, those 4 parties are the real rivals. Let me explain why – in Armenia, the opposition electorate has traditionally formed from the 1/3 of the population. And the 4 political forces that have shown or show opposition attitude will compete with each other for distributing that 1/3 of votes. The other three parties had a task of sharing a small electorate from the beginning. And the real rivals in the deep political processes will be the political forces that organized the yesterday event.”
Armen Ashotyan said that he didn’t want to go into detail about the pre-election strategy of the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) in this context, “This will be specifically commented on during the campaign.” Still he stated, “The de facto propaganda direction of the PAP proposed by Vartan Oskanian – to play opposition – will, I think, actually be against their electoral possibilities, since the votes of pro-government or centrist electorate will be completely left to the RPA.”
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By the way, he talked also about Oskanian’s explanation made today, “I have said the same thing before all elections that people doubt the results of elections because of election fraud. Now I say the same thing that we should do everything, in order that the people may have no doubts about the lawfulness of the election.” The RPA deputy chairman stated, “Conducting a free, fair and trustworthy election is the state’s priority stated many times by the president of the country. The urges made from different sides of the political stage about holding such an election start to remind me of a phenomenon that originated in the Middle Ages, when those who shouted ‘catch the thief’ more loudly than others were often the thieves themselves.”
Armen Ashotyan also claimed that the opposition parties that perceived the RPA as their only rival “actually depend on the political position of the Republic Party today to find them the main or the ‘favorite’ rival of the RPA. Therefore, parties that aspire after make the RPA a target of pre-election propaganda are more dependent on the RPA today, in order to be ‘found’ by our party the leader of the opposition and to be able to employ that political scheme by that.”
In response to our question whom the RPA was inclined to find its main rival, anyway – the ANC, the PAP or any other force – he said, “There is no chess player that can play chess with the RPA having the same real political potential as we have today. Our propaganda will suffice to implement our own projects and, if necessary, to give appropriate response to black PR and groundless criticism.”
He claimed again, “All political forces participating in the election dream of sitting around the ‘first chessboard’ with the RPA. However, the Republican Party will not choose an opponent for the first chessboard, since we actually prepare for a multi-board chess play.”
Anna ISRAELYAN
