Today Aravot inquired of Styopa Safaryan, the secretary general of the Heritage Party and a former MP, what underlay the Oskanian case, in his opinion, some agreements between the Republican Party of Armenia and the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) or the RPA was really punishing the PAP for not joining the coalition through Oskanian.
Mr. Safaryan said, “Putting aside the legal aspects of the former Foreign Minister’s case, which even he, Oskanian, didn’t manage to completely deny in the National Assembly, all the rest, the whole case is politicized and in this sense, Serzh Sargsyan just removed one of the candidates for the president who was considered as the favorite and could have been preferable in terms of argumentation against the background of the other candidates. Also, putting him in such a position, Serzh Sargsyan actually showed his power over Robert Kocharyan. I think that the results of the vote in the National Assembly and the vote itself were first of all about that. And in the end, Serzh Sargsyan put Gagik Tsarukyan in an awkward position, in order that he made up his mind which candidacy to announce, as well as managed to cause certain tension in the relations between Tsarukyan and Kocharyan.”
When asked to clarify whether what he said implied that he didn’t think that this story was a result of an internal agreement between the RPA and the PAP, was just a game, Mr. Safaryan said, “I cannot say – I cannot either claim or deny the possibility of that. However, one thing is clear – Oskanian had already caused serious problems for the PAP, had become a headache. And in this sense, I cannot say in whose interest it was to remove him from the list of presidential candidates. Certainly, there are some interests and I don’t know whether they all agreed together to remove him from the political stage or Serzh Sargsyan did it by himself.”
Read also
Reminding Mr. Safaryan that yesterday political scientist Yervand Bozoyan had expressed an idea that the PAP candidate for the upcoming presidential election would be Gagik Tsarukyan, we inquired how possible it was, in his opinion. The representative of the Heritage Party said, “Gagik Tsarukyan’s announcement is more probable than any other candidate’s.” In response to our question whether he thought that the PAP would participate in the election with its own candidate, anyway, Mr. Safaryan said, “I think yes.”
Melanya BARSEGHYAN
