Aram Karapetyan, leader of the “New Times” party, gave an interview to “1in.am News and Analyses” concerning the upcoming presidential elections. To the question what he thinks about the common candidate of opposition, Karapetyan responded: “I think that nowadays in Armenia we don’t have such opposition, and I’m almost sure that the opposition won’t have a common candidate. As you know the only party which was struggling against the government was ANC, but now it is also separated. To tell the truth I’m happy that the opposition won’t have the chance to nominate a single, common candidate, since one person can be cheated very easily and by money he can work for the government ”
The journalist reminded Karapetyan that Levon Zurabyan, ANC member, said that the opposition must have a “powerful” candidate, and asked him to comment who is that “powerful” candidate according to him. Karapetyan noted Levon-Ter Petrosyan to be that candidate, though added to be sure that if Ter-Petrossian continues acting the way he acts at present, he won’t be nominated. Touching upon Kocharyan’s return, Karapetyan stated“I think that Kocharyan won’t return and the Putin’s impact is great on that issue. I should stress that there are 2 PRs for Kocharyan. The one he says that under his power, our citizens leaved very well, and second is that Putin is his friend. If we take the second part into consideration then, as far as I know, Putin hasn’t told Kocahryan to return, and naturally he won’t do it”