Armenia’s 3 Former Foreign Ministers to Form Alliance?

The three former foreign ministers of Armenia — Heritage Party leader Raffi Hovannisian, Free Democrats party representative Alexander Arzumanyan and Civilitas Foundation founder and president Vartan Oskanian — met yesterday at the Civilitas Foundation’s office in Yerevan to discuss the possibility of forming an alliance, reports local daily Haykakan Jamanak (“Armenian Times”).

To confirm the news, Haykakan Jamanak called the Civilitas Foundation and spoke to an employee who said she was not authorized to respond to such questions and the person who might be able to is out of the office after 6 pm. The employee promised to pass on the message to Civilitas’ press secretary, but the newspaper didn’t receive a call before it went to print. Calls to Alexander Arzumanyan went unanswered.

The paper asserts that Free Democrats has been in discussions with the parliamentary opposition Heritage Party. According to the paper’s sources, the Heritage Party is ready to form an alliance with the Free Democrats party if the latter promise to back Raffi Hovannisian’s candidacy in the 2013 presidential elections. In exchange, Free Democrats would like to receive the maximum seats in a joint proportional party list: two places in the top 5 slots; three places in the second set of 5 spots. If in the upcoming elections, the alliance doesn’t make it into parliament, the condition to back Raffi Hovannisian in the presidential elections becomes null and void.

Haykakan Jamanak also writes that Alexander Arzumanyan and Vartan Oskanian had a long talk in the foyer of the Golden Tulip Hotel, after which they went to the Civilitas Foundation’s office.