RFE/RL – Samvel Karapetian’s Election Bloc Takes Shape

The alliance does not comprise former President Levon Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK) that hoped to join forces with Karapetian for the elections scheduled for June 7. Karapetian’s Strong Armenia party chose to team up instead with two other, little-known opposition parties led by lawyers.

The three parties signed a memorandum on the creation of the bloc, named Strong Armenia With Samvel Karapetian, during a ceremony in Yerevan.

“We must give a new opportunity to young and high-potential forces,” said Narek Karapetian, the tycoon’s nephew and right-hand man coordinating Strong Armenia’s activities.

“Politicians don’t have to be just professional politicians,” he told the press. “They must also have professional backgrounds in order to understand various fields. It is on the basis of professionalism that we have created the vision for our association.”

He did not say why the tycoon, who remains under house arrest, decided not to include Ter-Petrosian’s HAK into his electoral alliance.

In a recent series of social media posts, the 81-year-old ex-president, who had led Armenia to independence in 1991, lavished praise on Samvel Karapetian and endorsed him for the elections. Karapetian’s political team reacted cautiously to those overtures.

Karapetian pledged to unseat Armenia’s current government shortly after being arrested and prosecuted last June following his strong criticism of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s efforts to depose the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Garegin II. He was initially charged with calling for a violent regime. Law-enforcement authorities also brought tax evasion and fraud charges against him after he announced plans to challenge Pashinian in the 2026 elections.

The 60-year-old tycoon, who has mostly lived in Russian and made his fortune there since the early 1990s, rejects all accusations as politically motivated. He was moved to house arrest in December.

Under the Armenian constitution, Karapetian cannot become prime minister or even hold a parliament seat because of his dual Russian citizenship. His party has made clear that it will try to remove this constitutional hurdle if it wins the elections.

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