Author: Emma Jilavian

The pre-election campaign for the parliamentary elections in Armenia is actively underway and various political forces are mainly busy spreading populist statements and blaming the previous authorities for the mistakes they made.

Political discourse is largely ongoing Nikol Pashinyan on the criticisms of the RPA and the former authorities, promises to punish bribe-takers and mutual accusations for the mistakes made by the RPA, Nikol Pashinyan and his team during half a year.

However, RA is facing a number of serious challenges: an economic crisis and an expected economic collapse due to debt servicing, inflation and the accumulation of social problems, the Karabakh issue is relevant, Azerbaijan continues to arm itself and buy new weapons, not forgetting to threaten Yerevan and Stepanakert, and emigration has not weakened, the serious demographic crisis is assessed by experts as a threat to national security.

During the pre-election campaign, promises are made to the society, which will be difficult to implement without giving a clear answer to the above questions. Political forces avoid giving concrete answers to acute questions, limiting themselves to sending positive messages and promises.

This means that after the elections, the public will be deeply disappointed: many problems will continue to accompany RA and the Armenian economy, which will mean a permanent internal political crisis.

In order to face the external and internal challenges, all internal political forces must unite around the development of a strategy to solve the problems.

The force that won the elections should form a meritocratic or professional government, which, of course, will have a large public support and a high degree of legitimacy.

I am interested in the current political events to the extent that they will lead to the preservation of the positions of the RPA and its satellite political forces or, on the contrary, to their ultimate marginalization. Armenian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Artsakh Arman Melikyan mentioned this in a conversation with VERELQ.

“I proceed from the fact that now the political struggle for power has somewhat intensified and the competing teams, at least in their verbal words, neither see the meaning nor have the desire to spare each other. In this context, I consider it natural that every wrong or ambiguous expression can become an occasion for mutual accusations and reprimands,” he said.

Melikyan emphasized that there are factors that may not be clearly visible in today’s unique political confrontation, but they influence the approaches and rhetoric of the parties. According to him, acting prime minister can be considered from this point of view Nikol Pashinyan the harsh exhortation addressed to the President of Artsakh Bako Sahakyan.

“The thing is that it is difficult to imagine how the secretary of the National Security Council of the Republic of Azerbaijan or the spokesperson of the president can make comments without agreeing their main points with their superiors. In other words, their words are perceived as Bako Sahakyan’s words. The latter, quite legitimately, has always been perceived as Serzh Sargsyan’s closest associate and like-minded, close and reliable friend. Therefore, Nikol Pashinyan can consider the exhortations and criticism voiced by Artsakh officials as a systematic attempt to hinder the political success of his team, the real author of which is sitting in Yerevan,” he said.

At the same time, Arman Melikyan noted that in any case, it would be good if all the representatives of the Prime Minister’s team understand the weight of every word they utter and the possible negative consequences, and the political elite of Artsakh “would do well to seriously focus on the issue of a smooth transition of power and make the issue of holding early presidential elections a subject of discussion.”

To remind, during these four days of the campaign, the topic of Artsakh is mentioned many times by one of the active actors of the Armenian political field, the representatives of the “My Step” alliance, which is considered the favorite in these elections. A few days ago, a deputy candidate Sasun Mikayelyan declared that “the victory of the Velvet Revolution was more important than the Artsakh liberation war”, then Nikol Pashinyandeclared that the son of Artsakh and no president served in Artsakh and in the Armed Forces in general. It is clear that Stepanakert could not respond to these statements and answers were given regarding the accusations against Artsakh. However, the Acting Prime Minister urged President Bako Sahakyan in an almost threatening tone to calm down the representatives of his government and the press spokesperson and send them to work, not to make comments. He also announced that he will discuss all this with Bako Sahakyan after the elections.

Lia Khojoyan

The “We” alliance will also participate in the extraordinary NA elections to be held in December. On November 10, the “Republic” and “Free Democrats” parties signed a memorandum on participating in the upcoming extraordinary elections of the National Assembly with the “We” alliance.

Chairman of the “Free Democrats” party Khachatur Kokobelyan according to him, the “We” alliance claims to be the main opponent of the authorities, which will bring new freshness in terms of content and RA vision.
“We aspire to be the political force that will support the changes that the government has initiated today,” said Kokobelyan.

According to him, a situation has been created when the people can choose both the government and a strong and substantive opposition.

Chairman of the “Republic” party Aram Sargsyan in other words, the “We” alliance will have success in the political field of Armenia and will be active as long as possible. According to him, this alliance was formed because they believe that the revolution will reach its final result and goal if a number of changes take place. The revolution, Aram Sargsyan mentioned, he did Nikol Pashinyan, but Nikol Pashinyan himself claims that the revolution was made by the entire Armenian people under his leadership, and this does not mean that after that only Nikol Pashinyan’s supporters and the “Civil Agreement” party will be in the political field.

“Naturally, we understand that after the revolution, the power that implemented the revolution will form a majority in the parliament, but the revolution was made by the people, but that revolution will have zero value if only the “Civil Pact” party is in the political field. Here, I am convinced that the diversification of the domestic political field is definitely useful for Armenia, its citizens, and the current government,” Sargsyan said.

According to him, the “Republic” and “Free Democrats” parties are supporters of Western values ​​and Western democracy, they support such governance and forming a state of such a model. However, this does not mean that they are against Russia.