ARMENIAN OPPOSITION GETTING READY TO GAIN REVENGE

Political forces do not pin their hopes on the upcoming Parliamentary elections.

Nomination of candidates for Parliamentary elections has started in Armenia. The day after announcing the results of the Presidential elections the Central Electoral Commission started to accept from the parties applications for participation in the Parliamentary elections to be held on May 25. The opposition, which did not succeed in the Presidential elections, will try to gain a control over the legislative body.

March 12, 2003

PanARMENIAN.Net - The process of formation of pre-election coalitions is going on under the conditions when the opposition, dissatisfied with the outcome of the Presidential elections, is extremely agitated. Stepan Demirchyan's supporters try by all means to maintain the activeness of their electorate, the support of which will be enough for having the biggest faction in the Parliament. But it is unlikely that the large oppositional alliance formed on the eve of the second round of the Presidential elections will last.

The Peoples' Party led by Demirchyan will most probably unite with the ''Republic'' party led by the Ex Prime Minister Aram Sarkisyan. The pre-election union formed by them will pretend to a right of being the successor of the ''Unity'' block created on the eve of the last Parliamentary elections by Karen Demirchyan and Vazgen Sarkisyan. It is difficult to compare the nowadays leaders with their predecessors but the title ''Unity'' is already a brand able to bring votes.

The ''National Unity'' party will also overcome the 5% barrier without any difficulty. It is led by Artashes Geghamyan, who gathered 18% of the votes during the Presidential elections. The ''Constitutional Right'' union also has an opportunity to win, because its Presidential candidate, Aram Karapetyan, got 3%. The communists claim to have a faction in the Parliament, but after the recent split their position has weakened.

The parliamentary elections may become a good occasion for the Ex President Levon Ter-Petrosyan to return to the politics. However, judging from the results of sociological studies, the supporting him ''Armenian National Movement'' party continues to be in disfavor.

Among the political forces supporting Robert Kocharian, only the ''Dashnaktsutyun'' party has a serious rating. As far as the Republican party headed by the Prime Minister is concerned, its possibilities depend on their administrative resources. (Taking into consideration those resources, it may be assumed that the governing party pins more hopes with the majority elections in single member constituency, where 56 from the 131 deputies of the future parliament will be elected). Some other smaller parties supporting the President have also started to form pre-election blocks.

It is evident that not all those who have voted for Robert Kocharian will give their votes to the parties which will then support him. It would be a mistake to think that Robert Kocharian's electorate will mechanically pass to the political forces which will represent his position in the Parliament. This means that the correlation of forces in the National Assembly may be more favorable for the opposition as compared with that during the Presidential elections.