Gagik Tsarukyan, the leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party, the second largest parliamentary group, hasn’t congratulated Serzh Sargsyan on his reelection as president yet. Instead, on Saturday, Gagik Tsarukyan and PAP MPs Vartan Oskanian, Naira Zohrabyan, and Vahe Hovhannisyan met with Raffi Hovhannisyan, Rubik Hakobyan, and Hovsep Khurshudyan and had a three-hour-long conversation. In response to Aravot’s question why Mr. Tsarukyan didn’t congratulate Serzh Sargsyan, Tigran Urikhanyan, the press secretary of the PAP, said: “I think that the residents of Armenia are primarily, if not mainly, interested in what political forces, including the PAP and its leader, are doing, in order that changes take place in their very lives, in order that people have hope for better life and see a concrete way of achieving it, not some ceremonial or personal relations, which will not change their life for the better or for the worse.” As for what message this was, Aram Sargsyan, the leader of the Democratic Party of Armenia, drew attention to the fact that Raffi Hovhannisyan had won in the communities, where the PAP played a dominant role. “So it is not right to say that the PAP was neutral during the presidential election. The mayors of Gyumri, Nor Hachn, Yeghegnadzor, Abovyan, and others are members of the PAP, and Raffi Hovhannisyan obviously won there. It means that the government had fewer possibilities to use its resources,” our interlocutor says, adding that not only has Gagik Tsarukyan abstained from congratulating Serzh Sargsyan, but he hasn’t met with the latter either. “It is a position, all right,” Aram Sargsyan concludes, adding: “Continuing to say, along with that, that they are an alternative; one should explain what that alternative is? If we see the PAP, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and the Heritage Party take joint actions in the near future, there will be a new situation, which will cause a stronger headache for the government, if, certainly, they have one. Anyway, I am not under such an impression.”
