“After yesterday’s events, “Heritage” must first understand of what is going on”, so responded Director of the Armenian Institute for International and SecurityAffairs Stepan Safaryan, in response to the question of Aravot.am of whether he thinks the decision of the “Heritage” to leave the parliamentary trio likely. He reminded that that the agreements of the parliamentary trio are not functioning, for example, with regard to organization of the rally, when PAP can make a sole decision.
According to Mr. Safaryan, the moment is decisive. “Inside the three forces of the parliamentary trio, the decision-making mechanisms are not and have never been clearly defined, and such a critical situation can show all the defects. Eventually, it is not clear what can be done by one force that failed to set up a common agenda. It seemed that setting up the agenda is very close, therefore, the February 20 rally was announced, and if we look at the invitation, then the three forces had set the task of regime change; we knew the texts for two of them long ago – the “Heritage” and the ANC, while PAP set his text just recently. Accordingly, the invitation was as follows: if people give the consent to the agenda for these three, then pass to actions.”
According to Mr. Safaryan’s observation, it was visible that the “Heritage” has no longer the situation that existed after the PAP text, there is also no common agenda. Therefore, it is difficult to predict what “Heritage” will do tomorrow. In this respect, Stepan Safaryan noted, “Raffi Hovannisian has never said that he is going to the rally, he has announced that he is going to make an open press conference. The matter is not with the Freedom Square tomorrow, but what “Heritage” shall do and where to go.”
To our observation that the forces playing in domestic political field, each one in its turn, have been united around the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan – Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s letter to Serzh Sargsyan, reconciliation of Gagik Tsarukyan with Serzh Sargsyan, and it seems that Raffi Hovhannisyan has been left out of the game, Mr. Safaryan responded, “Yes, it is so. ANC also presented a topic with the government pertaining to legitimating its relations. Levon Ter-Petrosyan mentioned agreements are enough. There are no prosecutions against PAP members, hence, nothing prevents Levon Ter-Petrosyan to sit down vis-à-vis with Serzh Sargsyan and talk about the Armenian genocide matters. There is no obstacle for him than to commence a dialogue with the government. On the contrary, in case of Raffi Hovannisian and “Heritage”, there are obstacles, and until recently, the “Heritage” put forward the issue of Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation from the government, and after such a statement, hardly it can run a dialogue in the same way. Hence, the “Heritage” is left alone in Freedom Square.”
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To the question of whether he sees Serzh Sargsyan’s participation in these domestic political developments as a staging director, Mr. Safaryan responded as follows, “I have always used the word balanced rather than mutual agreement. The conflict by all its consequences was calculated by the government. Serzh Sargsyan knew how far Gagik Tsarukyan can run and how vulnerable he is, and at what distance to catch him. Consequently, PAP’s conduct was too predictable for the government. The PAP perhaps has not imagined that the government can put all of its masks aside and catch the PAP by the neck. In this context, it is notable that the PAP has infuriated the Republican Party, the game was too predictable for Republican Party unlike the previous ones that threw down the gauntlet against the government. Among them, Gagik Tsarukyan was the most vulnerable and predictable, it was not a problem for the government to keep him within circles. Hence, this was a very calculated game.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
