Analyst Aram Amatuni in his recent article on the “First News and Analyses” discusses the upcoming presidential elections and ANC-PAP relations.
“The news about the “joint candidate” in upcoming presidential elections still remains intriguing, since Armenian first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan and PAP leader Gagik Tsarukyan still haven’t announced their final decision. The issue is much more interesting because of the Armenian political traditions, according to which there are no principles and ideas and yesterday’s enemies can become friends and partners on baseless explanations or based on the “political religion”.
What will happen if the discussions for a joint candidate fail”? Will Ter-Petrosyan be nominated or not?
If Tsarukyan decides not to cooperate with ANC then in anyway Petrosyan will be at a risky situation. If he decides to be nominated alone, he will certainly fail the elections and put his name under the risk. If he decides not to be nominated, he will put the whole ANC party at a risk. So they should cooperate with PAP but still they won’t get any special thing by doing it since they have lost the prestige and power which they had about 5 years ago. They will fail the election even if they cooperate with PAP since it will be more PAP-ARF victory rather than PAP-ANC.
Armenian second president Kocharyan will use all the efforts of the mentioned political parties and leave them on the way. We shouldn’t forget that there might be also another cooperation; ANC-Republican. Of course it will be good for Armenian current president Serzh Sargsyan to have the support of ANC, not for its victory, but for preventing PAP-ANC cooperation. Even though Sargsyan shows that they don’t need any efforts but if Petrsoyan decides to play a “game” also with Republicans, Sargsyan may accept it for his reasons. That’s is the reason why Tsarukyan still waits and wants to see what will be in that situation; will Petrosyan try to also cooperate with Republican, or will they wait for Tsarukyan?
