Raffi Hovhannisian changed the opposition

Maybe Raffi Hovhannisian is not able to make a revolution in Armenia, but the fact is that his demonstrations and movement changed the opposition. During yesterday’s demonstration the ARF, represented by its activist Armen Rustamyan, announced in the square that their political power unequivocally agreed with the fact of Raffi Hovhannisyan and his Heritage party being the only opposition force. Presidential candidate Andrias Ghukasyan, who was against the manipulated outcome of elections, came to the place of demonstration and by holding Raffi’s hand accepted the legitimacy of elections. Political activists such as ANC’s Nikol Pashinyan, Karapet Rubinyan, former political prisoner Arkadi Ghukasyan, singer and composer Ruben Hakhverdyan came to the Freedom square and joined the movement.

We believe more people will join the movement and more people will stand by this opposition force, but the fact is that this movement brought the five-year monopoly of the ANC over the opposition forces to end. The flag of change of the government and fighting the ruling power in the country is in Raffi’s hands now. Those activists who agree with this power and join them, will be a part of the opposition, and those who believe this movement cannot be led by Raffi as he is going to cut deals with the government, will stay out of the political arena notwithstanding their financial and other resources.

Nikol Pashinyan has taken the tool for destruction of ANC in his hands, even though he is still ANC member formally, he has announced that those people who want to replace the illegal government, should be in the Freedom square but not next to Raffi. This statement was welcomed by the people in the square. This means if the ANC and PA do not come to the square next time, it will be a message that they do not want the replacement of the illegal government. It is not excluded that this topic may be discussed in the square during the next demonstrations and they may recognize the mentioned political powers as the government’s supporters. There was a time when ANC claimed heritage was supporting the government. Now there is a good opportunity to switch with the roles.

There are people who believe Raffi is in trouble after announcing about his victory because now he does not know how to sell that victory. He does not know how to establish that victory de-jure. During the demonstration Raffi Hovhannisian clearly explained to people that he was not going to insist on the government to recognize his victory; he was ready to compromise according to his offer proposed to Serzh Sargsyan during their meeting. During yesterday’s demonstration Raffi Hovhannisian shared some details of their meeting with the president, and according to him he has suggested the president to accept the people’s victory, which means that Raffi is identifying himself with “the people.” Serzh Sargsyan did not accept this offer. Raffi suggested the president to organize new elections, which was declined too.

Raffi Hovhannisian says that he has also suggested to punish all those people that were involved in electoral violations, i.e. village community heads, mayors, army commanders, parliamentarian, heads of headquarters, who are key players in the government, and switch to 100% proportional system of elections and organize new parliamentary elections. As a result of this they would come to power, however Serzh Sargsyan turned this down too.

Raffi says that when the president turned down all his offers, he said that they would have no choice other than continuing the fight for victory, which would proceed in a quiet environment and according to the Constitution and would expand o involve all regions of Armenia. Today Raffi is going to organize three demonstrations in Ashtarak, Vanadzor and Gyumri. Tomorrow another demonstration is planned in Yerevan.

It is interesting that Raffi Hovhannisian is speaking about his proposals only and does not say what they president has proposed from his side. RPA spokesman Edward Sharmazanov says Raffi does not say the entire content of his discussion with the president and hinted that he could publish their version of the discussion.

What does Raffi want to do? During the presidential election 2008 Levon Ter-Petrosyan had his own scenario of changing the government, according to which his team would fight for destructing the government, due to which some key members of the government would join their team resulting in destruction of the governmental pyramid, and eventually he would be recognized as the head of the politically dominating power. At that time there was an impression that the governmental pyramid would really fall because some key representatives of the government joined the opposition movement. However, this movement of running away from the government was not massive and the campaign did not succeed in destructing the governmental pyramid.

Even though Raffi collected twice more votes than Levon Ter-Petrosyan did during the presidential election 2008, this time the crowd of people that came to the square for demonstration was twice smaller. By going to regions Raffi Hovhannisian is going to inform the people in remote areas that there is an opposition power now and it has a new leader. This will also help him to bring people to the square and suppress the government. Raffi Hovhannisyan thinks the president refused him because he thought Raffi was a weak leader, thus now he needs to show that he has power behind him in order to back up at least a part of his claims to the government.

By Avetis Babajanyan