PROSPEROUS ARMENIA ELECTS NEW LEADER FOR FIRST TIME

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
March 5 2015

5 March 2015 – 5:49pm

Gagik Tsarukyan, the leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party, has
declared his resignation today, leading to elections for a new leader
for the first time in the party’s history. As his final political
gesture, he proposed the secretary of the party Naira Zograbyan as
the new leader. Gaining almost unanimous votes, she declared the
party’s opposition alignment.

Alexander Markarov, the director of the Armenian branch of the
Institute of CIS Countries, believes that Tsarukyan’s resignation
was a big loss for the party. He reminded that the party was the
project of second President Robert Kocharyan and under full control
of Tsarukyan. Without financial injections from Tsarukyan, the expert
believes, the party will lose seats in the parliament. Consequently,
Markarov goes on, Prosperous Armenia will no longer be the political
force it used to in the previous two electoral cycles. The analyst
reminded that the Armenian opposition had not come up with a positive
program to consolidate it. The attempt by the Armenian National
Congress to use the resource base of Prosperous Armenia created a
negative coalition focused on opposing the ruling Republican Party.

Markarov said that Prosperous Armenia was trying to join other parties,
but it may weaken its resource base.

Levon Zurabyan, the head of the parliamentary faction of the Armenian
National Congress, expressed confidence that President Serzh Sargsyan
had counterattacked the “trio” trying to launch a campaign of protests
against him. He reminded that general mobilization had been declared
on February 20 to instigate people to demand Sargsyan’s resignation.

According to Zurabyan, heavy pressure was put on Tsarukyan and his
party just a few days before the protests, over 500 people were
detained, businessmen and anyone with sympathies towards the party
were targets of the tax and customs services.

Zurabyan believes that Tsarukyan’s resignation was a blow to the
opposition. The alliance of the National Congress and Prosperous
Armenia within the framework of the politological analysis of Levon
Ter-Petrosyan, made on November 25, 2011, was the main mobilizing
factor of the public to fight against Sargsyan, the expert assumes.

Since then, people have had no hopes for off-year presidential and
parliamentary polls, formation of a legal government or any radical
changes the population needed. Zurabyan added that 300,000 people
had left the country in 7 years of Sargsyan’s presidency, comparing
the mass migration with an exodus of the population.