REPUBLICANS SIGNAL END OF COALITION RULE
By Astghik Bedevian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
May 17 2007

The ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) may allot some government
posts to other political groups but is unlikely to form a genuine
coalition government, one of its leaders said on Thursday.

The HHK has shared power with President Robert Kocharian and the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) for the past
several years. Its top leader, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, said
on Wednesday that he wants to make his new cabinet as broad-based
as possible despite winning an absolute majority in Armenia’s newly
elected parliament. But he stopped short of calling for the formation
of another coalition.

Galust Sahakian, another senior Republican, argued that the HHK
regards its landslide victory in Saturday’s parliamentary elections
as a popular mandate to have a "monopoly" on power and does not want
the kind of a power-sharing deal which it had cut with Dashnaktsutyun
and the Orinats Yerkir Party following the previous legislative polls.

"A coalition document is not even being discussed," Sahakian said.

"Even if it is discussed, it will be nominal and will not mean an
in-depth approach to coalition building."

But he said the Republicans are ready to share some of their power
even with those parties that failed to win any parliament seats. He
did not deny that this applies to the pro-establishment United Labor
Party and the opposition National Unity Party (AMK) that won less
than 5 percent of the vote needed for entering the National Assembly
under the proportional representation system.

"Of course, if political forces cooperate [with the HHK] they may
get [government] levers within the framework of that cooperation,"
Sahakian told reporters.

Observers note that unlike virtually all other opposition leaders,
the AMK’s normally outspoken leader, Artashes Geghamian, has refrained
from alleging vote rigging or criticizing the government so far.