YEREVAN. – Armenia’s opposition Heritage Party has always been against the majority nomination procedure for the parliamentary elections because it knows who are elected MPs with that procedure, Heritage’s Board member and former MP Stiopa Safaryan—who is running by the majority procedure for an MP seat from capital city Yerevan’s Election District No. 1—stated during a press conference on Thursday.      

“In those election districts where the majoritarian candidates are competing, the candidate battles against the system, the state resources, and not against a person. My opponent today is the state resources. [But] I am running [for the MP mandate] because I do not wish to surrender on my road to battle,” Safaryan said, and added that the nomination of other opposition candidates for this seat is very heartbreaking for him.       

With respect to next year’s presidential elections, he stated that the current situation is unprecedented because the opposition had never delayed its announcement to run in such elections for this long. In Stiopa Safaryan’s view, if opposition bloc Armenian National Congress (ANC) leader and First President Levon Ter-Petrosyan runs for these elections, the losses will be greater than the gains. He said the ANC could announce that it will not nominate a presidential candidate so that the voters may feel unbound.   

Photo by Sona Barseghyan/NEWS.am