ARMENIAN OPPOSITION PARTIES REFUSE TO GO TO POLLS WITHIN OLD BLOC
Arminfo
26 Feb 07
Yerevan, 26 February: "Our opposition colleagues have turned down
the proposal of the People’s Party of Armenia [PPA] to run for the
parliamentary election within the Ardarutyun [Justice] bloc formed
in 2003," PPA press secretary Ruzan Khachatryan has said.
She said that since the main negotiators in the recent consultations
were Ardarutyun bloc members, the People’s Party of Armenia proposed
keeping the same name for the new bloc after enlarging it and making
corrections in it.
"People placed trust in the Ardarutyun bloc four years ago. The
bloc had and still has a programme and a key goal – to restore
constitutional order in the country. Since the same political parties
plus the Heritage party of Raffi Hovhannisyan were involved in the
negotiations, the PPA made that proposal, which at the end of the
day was not accepted," Khachatryan said.
She, however, said that the opposition’s unification does not
necessarily imply setting up large election blocs and that this may
cover a wide range of issues from moral and tactical support to such
a crucial measure as oversight of the elections process, voting and
vote counting. "The People’s Party of Armenia backed the Alternative’s
idea to set up an election bloc based on the idea of impeaching the
head of the incumbent regime but several major opposition forces
refused to join it, which made the project lose its significance,"
Khachatryan said.
Throughout the past week, the PPA, the Heritage party, the Republic
party and the National Democratic Union held consultations on
the format of their participation in the 12 May parliamentary
election. Aram Sargsyan, the leader of the Republic party, said that
he would propose that his opposition colleagues form a broad alliance.
The council of Demirchyan’s PPA was supposed to hold a meeting
today [26 February] to pass a final decision on how the party will
participate in the parliamentary election and approve the party’s
proportional representation list. But Khachatryan said that "the
meeting will be held in a couple of days, it was delayed to have some
technical issues settled".