YEREVAN. – Armenia’s opposition ARF Dashnaktsutyun Party has stated that the best move for the upcoming capital city Yerevan Council election would have been to form a single oppositional list, which would have been headed by opposition Heritage Party Chairman, former FM Raffi Hovannisian.

ARF Supreme Body representative Armen Rustamyan, who heads the ARF list for the Yerevan election, stated the aforesaid during a press conference on Thursday.

In Rustamyan’s words, the ARF had no pretensions with respect to joining forces with Heritage, but the differences in the approach of the two parties are becoming apparent.

“We were proposing to strengthen the [opposition] movement, compel the authorities to make serious concessions, and to pass to a parliamentary system of governance within two years and give levers of oversight to the opposition.        

“Naturally, if Raffi Hovannisian [who was declared runner-up to the winner, incumbent President Serzh Sargsyan, as a result of the presidential election that was conducted on February 18, but who claims to be the real winner in the vote] was heading the movement, we were suggesting that he [also] head the [aforementioned single oppositional] list [for Sunday’s Yerevan Council election]. But they stated that one cannot depreciate [their] victory in the presidential election,” Rustamyan said.   

To the remark that the Yerevan election campaigns of ARF and the Heritage-led “Barev [Hello], Yerevan” bloc are similar, Armen Rustamyan responded as follows: 

“The ‘barev’ method is not Raffi Hovannisian’s monopoly. The first to use that method was [ARF MP] Artsvik Minasyan, in 2009.”   

Photo by Arsen Sargsyan/NEWS.am