SPLIT OF RULING COALITION – CATASTROPHE FOR ARMENIA’S POLITICAL FIELD

Yerevan, May 17. ArmInfo. The split of the ruling coalition may
bring the whole political field of Armenia to a catastrophe, says
independent MP Hamayak Hovhanissyan.

He says that the political and business elites are showing tendency
to merge. This has already resulted in forces like United Labor Party
and People’s Deputy group. But if earlier the economic elite accepted
the services of the political one, now it wants to serve itself. So
the parliamentary elections 2007 will be anti-political – everything
will be decided by oligarchs and this will kill the political field.

Commenting on the split of the Orinats Yerkir party and its leader
Artur Bagdassaryan from the ruling coalition, Hovhannissyan said that
after the elections 2003 Bagdassaryan began posing as “successor
of the presidential seat” – something the coalition and President
Kocharyan could not stand. So, they simply threw Bagdassaryan and
his party off the government. And now it will take him a long time
to prove to the people that he has no more links with Kocharyan.

One should not compare Bagdassaryan with Yuschenko or Saakashvili
because Kocharyan is not Kuchma or Shevardnadze, he is more like
authoritarian Yeltsin, who crushed all of his potential opponents.

Concerning the presidential election 2008, Hovhannissyan says that
everything will become clear already during the parliamentary elections
2007. The hyper-strong political force Republic party will push its
candidate for prime minister who will later become president. “Show
me just one person who doubts that this will be Defence Minister
Serzh Sargsyan,” says Hovhannissyan.

Hovhannissyan says that the vacant post of parliament speaker will
become a bone of content inside the government. This will give a
good chance for the opposition to get together and to nominate its
candidate for the post, for example, the leader of the National Unity
party Artashes Gegamyan.