PAP turned into a soldier fighting for justice

Yesterday the chair of the Prosperous Armenia Party Gagik Tsarukyan convened a session with participation of the PAP faction MPs in the party head office in order to decide how they would defend a member of the party Vardan Oskanyan. The Prosecutor-General intends to press charges against the latter and Civilitas, an organization founded by him. Yesterday the PAP issued a statement, in which it labels these developments political repression, which is directed against Oskanyan and the PAP. Yesterday it was possible to say Maybachs and many other luxury cars parked in front of the PAP office, which belonged to many political repressed party members.

It is clear that the PAP MPs will vote against the solicitation of the prosecutor to press charges against Oskanyan. Most probably, all opposition MPs will also vote against this solicitation and will thus express their support to the PAP and Oskanyan. Does this mean that by uniting with the PAP these parties will also unite closer to presidential elections and endorse a joint candidate? But it is already unarguable that the conflict between the RPA and PAP is becoming one of the top political themes of Armenia.

Today, NA factions and even PAP MPs are interested in one key question – what purposes does the government have by these actions? Is it trying to pressure on the PAP by these methods to ensure their support for Serzh Sargsyan’s candidacy during the presidential elections or is it really trying to forge the image of opposition for the PAP to ensure that the latter nominates its own candidate during the presidential race? Yesterday the PAP MPs, including the businessmen MPs were quite frowned. For them these developments are not very clear. But they assure that there is no pressure against them.

They believe that if the PAP really had conflicts with the RPA then they might have been repressed too in the form of inspections in their businesses. Why did the government ignore the most vulnerable members of the PAP – the businessmen? Perhaps the reason is to show that if Oskanyan is not protected from criminal responsibility, neither are any of the PAP members. Among the PAP members there are also former Legal State members and they probably remember what happened to them when their former party had problems with the government.

They are called to the president’s office and are cordially requested to quit their parties. The PAP MPs claim that no such pressure was applied to them. They think that they are more protected within the PAP than within the Legal State in 2006. Several members of the ANC don’t believe that PAP is the victim of the government either. T

hey also have serious doubts that the game of making PAP opposition is directed against them. The goal of that is to manifest the PAP in the image of a victim in the eyes of the society. But they don’t dare to openly speak about because there is the “political analysis” of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, according to which the ANC should do its best to keep the PAP in the opposition field. The ANC members think that if the circumstances develop in this manner Ter-Petrosyan might refuse to nominate his candidacy and might suggest that the ANC endorses the PAP candidate.

The memories of parliamentary elections are still fresh among all of us. Back then, Ter-Petrosyan would explain ANC’s cooperation with the PAP with the following – “it is not important how many seats each party will have in parliament. The important thing is to ensure that the opposition parties have more seats than the RPA in the parliament.” Now this slogan may have a different formulation – it is not important who the opposition candidate is, the important thing is to ensure that this candidate is able to beat the government candidate. ANC members still stubbornly resist this scenario. ANC wasn’t able to form a new political agenda and be in charge of it. Vice versa, currently the whole attention of the society will be drawn to the PAP-government conflict. If it turns out that this conflict is fake then the ANC will also have its share of guilt in it.