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Thursday 14 February 2008

Arthur the loser, or the best hope for prime minister Serj Sargsyan

It was expected that Orinats Yerkir opposition party would announce today that they support Ter-Petrosyan and join opposition coalition with Levon and Raffi.

Panorama reports that they just announced that Arthur Baghdasaryan will consider the possibility of joining the opposition bloc only after the first round of votes.

He lost his best chance to prove that he is genuinely interested in forming united opposition bloc against current authorities, when he refused quitting the race before 9 February deadline. He now lost his second best chance, and whatever happened during second round of voting, in my eyes he lost credibility of genuine opposition politician. There were always lots of speculations around Arthur questioning his real motives. He now proved that people who were cautious in taking his words seriously had all the right reasons to do so.

My only suspicion is that Arthur ‘plans’ to pass the first round of voting, and this would be the best option for current authorities too, since they would be able to claim that elections were fair and one of their “fierce critics” was able to pass the first round. In that case they would be able to divide opposition camp and diminish the impact of possible protests from electorate and criticism from international community.

Taking into account the seriousness of situation and the fact that government seems to lose ground ahead of elections, the best hope for prime minister Serj Sargsyan may come from his “fierce critic” Arthur Baghdasaryan.

I hope this scenario will not get materialised.