YEREVAN. – Prolonging time before announcing a presidential candidate or supporting another candidate has advantages and disadvantages for the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), opposition Heritage party secretary Stepan Safaryan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The PAP’s advantage is the following: it realizes that the party’s position is very important for preserving or changing political status-quo and hence do not hurry in announcing about their participation in the presidential elections.

Safaryan also stated that opposition Armenian National Congress’ (ANC) further step highly depend on PAP’s actions.

The latter’s disadvantage is that Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) intensifies the tension and PAP MP Vartan Oskanian’s parliamentary immunity withdrawal was only the first signal.

As for whether the ANC will support any PAP candidate, Safaryan said that among PAP likely candidates are PAP leader, one of Armenia’s richest businessmen Gagik Tsarukyan, former FM Vartan Oskanian and former President Robert Kocharyan, while Oskanian is the most improper candidate for the opposition bloc.

Photo by Sona Barseghyan