If you vote for the ruling coalition’s senior partner, the Republican Party of Armenia, it will become worse. This was stated Thursday by the opposition bloc Armenian National Congress (ANC) leader and Armenia’s First President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, during his meeting in Yeghegnadzor city, and within the framework of campaigning for the upcoming parliamentary elections.   

“Our [state] budget is [US$] 2.5 billion, and [$]5 billion is stolen from you every year. If they had not stolen, the budget would have been $7 billion,” the First President said. 

He noted that there is no difference between the regimes of incumbent President Serzh Sargsyan and former President Robert Kocharyan, and added the current authorities should not be accepted as true.

“If they are stealing [$]5 billion up to now, they will steal more from now on,” Levon Ter-Petrosyan said.

He added that around one million people had left Armenia during the current authorities’ tenure in the past 14 years, and asked the people to vote solely for the ANC.