UNITED OPPOSITION OR ‘WESTERN BLOC’?
by Armen Tsaturyan

Hayots Ashkharh, Armenia
Feb 5 2008

Ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s statement in [third town of]
Vanadzor on 1 February that [Orinats Yerkir party leader and
presidential candidate] Artur Baghdasaryan and Heritage party leader
Raffi Hovhannisyan may support [Ter-Petrosyan] in the near future is
one of the options for the Armenian opposition to unite ahead of the
19 February polls.

Reacting to Ter-Petrosyan’s prediction, the leader of the Orinats
Yerkir party has said, in turn, that he is not ruling out anything
at this point "both in terms of him [Ter-Petrosyan] joining me and me
joining him" because, as Baghdasaryan said, "negotiations with Levon
Ter-Petrosyan and Raffi Hovhannisyan, and who joins who and at which
phase would be known after the negotiations".

The Orinats Yerkir party is trying to set up a united office to
monitor the election fraud, and a number of forces, including
the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun [ARFD] and
[National Democratic Union leader and presidential candidate] Vazgen
Manukyan’s representatives, have said they might support the idea.

Political analysts also discuss the possibility of an alliance between
the Orinats Yerkir party, the ARFD, Manukyan and the Heritage party.

We think that the results of recent opinion polls conducted by
various companies (Gallup, Sotsiometr) that predict Prime Minister
Serzh Sargsyan’s victory in the first stage of the election are the
real reason for all this. This is an option that is not good for
the other participants of the presidential race as well as for those
political forces who count on getting something from the race. They
all would be deprived from a possibility to engage in talks to gain
something, which is inevitable should there be a run-off, and this
is an accurately veiled "strategic goal" for many of them.

It may look like that there is the "instructive experience " of 1996
when the unification around Vazgen Manukyan ahead of the voting day
helped unite the opposition electorate and even raised its numbers to
some extent. However, what are the chances of a new "snowball effect"
if the votes of the two out of nine candidates – Ter-Petrosyan and
Baghdasaryan – unite?

Two options, while only theoretically, are possible: however, it
is apparent that Ter-Petrosyan will never drop out of the race to
endorse Baghdasaryan because about a dozen of political parties
and organizations have cast their support to Ter-Petrosyan, and
many of them do not accept Baghdasaryan’s candidacy. This means
that Baghdasaryan would become the one to join; but according to
opinion polls, his rating is higher than that of Ter-Petrosyan. The
question is would it be possible to merge the electorates of these
two candidates to support Ter-Petrosyan’s political goals when the
Orinats Yerkir party, which has been left out of the government only
recently, is apparently a more moderate opposition force than those
who support Ter-Petrosyan.

Furthermore, it is not a secret that the Orinats Yerkir party members
and supporters are united on the basis of the "one man party" principle
and Artur Baghdasaryan is that man here. If Baghdasaryan endorses
Ter-Petrosyan, only part of his votes would go to Ter-Petrosyan. The
other members of the party – mostly those who still have jobs in the
lower levels of the government – would not understand such a move by
their leader. The result would be that Ter-Petrosyan’s electorate would
only be equal to that of the size of what Baghdasaryan’s electorate
is currently. This means that after the number of the candidates is
"reduced by one," the total sum of votes [for one candidate] would not
increase but, in fact, would be even less than the sum of their votes.

As for the Heritage party leader’s possible support, it is hard
to expect a serious increase of Ter-Petrosyan’s electorate because
the majority of those who voted for Raffi Hovhannisyan’s party in
the past parliamentary election [in May 2007] have made up their
minds in the past months to vote for another opposition party; some
even have decided to vote for the ARFD. By continuously delaying to
endorse a presidential candidate, the leader of the Heritage party
has diminished the army of his supporters.

So, if Baghdasaryan and Hovhannisyan unite with Ter-Petrosyan,
this would only result in a unification of only one branch of the
opposition and form a kind of a "western bloc" in the camp of the
Armenian opposition.

However, not only inside this country but also outside it, there
would be no serious political circles that would be ready to bet
on the possibility of such rapid and fundamental changes of foreign
political preferences because this perspective does not reflect the
will of the majority of Armenians and would certainly fail in the 19
February election.

[from Armenian]