{"id":137838,"date":"2011-10-29T09:39:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T04:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=137838"},"modified":"2011-10-29T09:43:42","modified_gmt":"2011-10-29T04:43:42","slug":"opposition-leader-changes-focus-to-preparing-for-2012-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/10\/29\/opposition-leader-changes-focus-to-preparing-for-2012-elections.html","title":{"rendered":"Opposition Leader Changes Focus to Preparing for 2012 Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Armenian National Congress (HAK) may well fail to force Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to resign soon and should therefore start preparing for regular parliamentary elections due in May next year, the opposition bloc\u2019s top leader, Levon Ter-Petrossian, said on Friday, RFE\/RL’s Armenian service<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Armenian National Congress will continue to do everything to hold pre-term elections, but since that doesn\u2019t only depend on us we must be prepared for any development,\u201d Ter-Petrossian told thousands of supporters demonstrating in Yerevan\u2019s Liberty Square.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf, contrary to all our efforts, we do not manage after all to achieve Serzh Sargsyan\u2019s resignation \u2026 then the Congress must seek to gain the kind of weighty presence in the National Assembly that would put it in a position to immediately raise, single-handedly or in an alliance with other forces, the issue of his impeachment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Therefore, continued Ter-Petrossian, HAK should now \u201cseriously work\u201d on ensuring the freedom and fairness of the parliamentary elections. He presented in that context a raft of draft amendments to Armenian electoral legislation which the bloc believes would complicate vote rigging.<\/p>\n

The amendments call for a thorough revision of the country\u2019s vote registers which HAK and other opposition forces say are grossly inflated by the authorities to facilitate electoral fraud. They also envisage that all 131 seats in the parliament would be contested on the party list basis.<\/p>\n

The conduct of early presidential and parliamentary elections was HAK\u2019s key stated demand until recently. Ter-Petrossian signaled last month his readiness to renounce that demand in return for other government concessions.<\/p>\n

He went on to also offer the unconditional resumption of a dialogue with Armenia\u2019s three-party ruling coalition. HAK suspended the talks in August in protest against the arrest of opposition activist Tigran Araqelyan.<\/p>\n

The Sargsyan administration did not respond to these overtures even during 8-day nonstop demonstrations held by HAK in Liberty Square. Some HAK figures admit that the authorities did not bow to the pressure because attendance at those protests was not strong.<\/p>\n

In his speech, Ter-Petrossian also acknowledged the need for greater popular support for HAK drive to topple Sargsyan. \u201cWe will spend the coming months trying to turn this slogan into the conviction of all people,\u201d he said, adding that HAK will focus on strengthening its branches outside Yerevan for that purpose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Armenian National Congress (HAK) may well fail to force Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to resign soon and should therefore…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}