Political consultations on three main issues – holding a snap parliamentary election, switching to proportional representation, and increasing the supervisory leverage of the opposition – initiated by the Heritage Party and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) parliamentary groups have been held for a few days now. However, Armen Rustamyan, the leader of the ARF parliamentary group, stated that the negotiations had reached a deadlock. Ruben Hakobyan, the leader of the Heritage Party parliamentary group, in his turn, stated that the government was against the agenda of the extraordinary meeting. www.aravot.am inquired during a conversation with political scientists what would come of the negotiations, given the current situation, in their opinion and whether the opposition would achieve success. Ruben Mehrabyan, an expert of the Center for Political and International Studies, stated during a conversation with us that those issues were absolutely realistic and useful, but the opposition was negotiating in a wrong way in this case. He then added: “The other negotiating party should not be Hovik Abrahamyan or the oligarchic wing of the Republican Party. The other negotiating party should be Serzh Sargsyan, since as a result of the negotiations a blow will be dealt to that very oligarchic wing, which has become the main obstacle in the way of reforms. It is a realistic agenda; I hope that in the end, the government will take the initiative. Forgive me, but if one states that one struggles against the oligarchy and goes and expresses gratitude to the number one oligarch for his contribution, naturally, they block those negotiations. The only rational and political way out are negotiations between the opposition and the government, moreover, the negotiating parties should be Raffi Hovhannisyan and Serzh Sargsyan, since the road leading to Hovik Abrahamyan’s office or the PAP central office is a road leading nowhere, to obscuring the picture and marginalizing the opposition and a road to the continuation of the bog.” Political scientist Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan also thinks that negotiations in this format cannot achieve success and goes into detail: “This is clear, not only because the Republican Party has a clear position, but also for a simple reason that the opposition is not homogeneous today, and the PAP that carries weight in the opposition camp will not support the demand of the
ARF and the Heritage Party either. The demand to dissolve the parliament will not be accepted by the overwhelming majority of the parliament, which makes such a process pointless from the start. There may be some achievements; I am talking about acting, being active on the political stage that the Heritage Party and the ARF try to do. There is the PAP’s and the Armenian National Congress’s share in the votes won by Raffi Hovhannisyan. The Heritage Party tries to be active in accordance with the votes it has gotten, which suggests being active in different fields of activity – in parliament, at rallies, in the Constitutional Court. This is just an imitation of serious activities; they don’t have enough resources to achieve anything. They just take these steps to show that they can aspire to play a more serious role in political life in the future than the one they had played before the election.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
