YEREVAN. - Provided that the President and the PM in office will not participate in hypothetic early elections, the leader of opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC) Levon Ter-Petrosyan will win none of these positions, sociologist Aharon Adibekyan said at a press conference on Wednesday.

“I was much interested what would be the results of hypothetic early Presidential and Parliamentary election, provided that current President and PM do not participate. The most frequent guess among our respondents was for the leader of Prosperous Armenia party Gagik Tsarukyan, whereas Levon Ter-Petrosyan was only the second,” said Adibekyan.

According to him, the opinion poll among 1650 Armenian citizens indicated that big businessman and leader of Prosperous Armenia party Gagik Tsarukyan is also the most expected candidate for PM, but Levon Ter-Petrosyan is marked only 6th in this list. Second most expected PM candidate is the second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan.

Findings of the poll reveal that the political elite of Armenia has significantly depleted recently.

“In presidential elections of 1998 we had 21 candidates, however the respondents named only 14 candidates for President now: 5 among authorities, 7 from opposition and two independent candidates. 19 candidates were named for PM office: 9 of them represented authorities, 8 represented opposition, and 2 of them were independent candidates,” said the expert.

At the same time, 68 percent of 1650 respondents refused to participate in Adibekyan‘s poll.