Epress.am News from Armenia
The authorities had place their hopes on the fact that there won’t be elections for three years, there shouldn’t be any issues before them and the opposition has to slowly wear out. Armenia’s serious analysts were seriously predicting that this movement was going to fall apart. They were saying that the opposition usually comes together just before elections and attempts to break the authorities’ stronghold, and when this doesn’t succeed, it crumbles. And it gathers again before the next elections. This is the first time that all those analysts were wrong, said Armenian National Congress (HAK) senior representative Levon Zurabyan, speaking at the opening of HAK’s new office in the Yerevan administrative district of Davtashen.
According to Zurabyan, from February to May, the opposition held quite a serious campaign of rallies: the authorities realized that the political tension had reached such a level that there remained a fine line for events in Armenia to mimic the Arab Spring, and this was the reason that the authorities decided to accept their proposal or demands, he said.
As for the dialogue between HAK and the authorities, Zurabyan said “We have to receive a response from [Armenian President] Serzh Sargsyan.”
“We have absolutely no intention of aggravating the situation and pursuing those responses that have been heard as a pretext. We need very serious clarity and for a reasonable time, we’re giving it. We need to know whether the authorities accept or reject this proposal. And there has to be clarity here. Partial, sloppy answers don’t satisfy us. The authorities are obliged to introduce such clarity. If they say ‘yes,’ that means the authorities are willing to solve this deep political crisis through peaceful talks; if they say ‘no,’ that means one thing: they are again, in fact, challenging the people; again they say, come, gather, show your strength, because we don’t understand any other language apart from force,” he said.