Armenia’s deputy speaker on “three-headed party of war”
Armenia’s Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan has described opposition forces planning to take part in the parliamentary elections in June as a “three-headed party of war”. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had earlier used the same phrase. He said that the “three-headed party of war will face a wall of people in the elections”. He meant that voters will not support them and will not allow them to enter parliament.
Pashinyan’s team uses the term “three-headed party of war” to refer to the Armenia bloc, as well as the Strong Armenia and Prosperous Armenia parties.
The prime minister explained that their leaders advocate a “revision of peace” with Azerbaijan. He argued that this would inevitably lead to war.
The Armenia bloc is led by former president Robert Kocharyan. Russian businessman Samvel Karapetyan heads the Strong Armenia party. Authorities arrested him in June last year on charges of publicly calling for a seizure of power. He is currently under house arrest. The Prosperous Armenia party was founded and is led by prominent businessman Gagik Tsarukyan.
Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan has drawn voters’ attention to how his main opponents are preparing for the elections. He noted that the Prosperous Armenia party has not announced its candidate for prime minister. He also said that Strong Armenia’s candidate, Samvel Karapetyan, cannot run for the post. Armenia’s constitution allows only a person with solely Armenian citizenship to serve as prime minister. Karapetyan holds citizenship of Armenia, Russia and Cyprus.
Based on this, Rubinyan concludes that the three opposition forces share a single candidate for prime minister. In his view, that candidate is former president Robert Kocharyan.
“What does this mean now? How many prime ministerial candidates does the three-headed party of war have? One. The Russian oligarch cannot be a candidate for prime minister. Tsarukyan is not a candidate, because he says: ‘I will not say who my candidate is.’ In short, these three forces together have one candidate for prime minister — Kocharyan,” he said.
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‘They have decided to take part in the elections with a secret candidate’
The deputy speaker said the situation ahead of the parliamentary elections has become rather unusual. Rubinyan pointed out that Robert Kocharyan appears first on the electoral list of the Armenia bloc as its candidate for prime minister. He said the situation looks different for the Prosperous Armenia and Strong Armenia parties.
“The number one candidate from the force led by Tsarukyan is Tsarukyan. But the candidate for prime minister is not Tsarukyan. This is an exclusive know-how in global politics: their candidate for prime minister is a secret. In other words, Tsarukyan says: my candidate for prime minister is a secret,” he said.
Gagik Tsarukyan’s party has already presented its election programme to voters. However, it has not yet announced the name of its candidate for prime minister.
Rubinyan said Prosperous Armenia has chosen to run in the elections with a “secret candidate”.
“In other words, dear voters, if you cast your vote for Tsarukyan’s force, you should know that anyone could become prime minister,” he said.
The deputy speaker also stressed that Tsarukyan’s electoral list includes figures who took part in the 2021 snap elections as members of Robert Kocharyan’s Armenia bloc.
He added that the electoral list of the recently established Strong Armenia party also includes representatives from Kocharyan’s team. Among them is Aram Vardevanyan, listed second on the party’s slate led by Samvel Karapetyan. Vardevanyan is a former MP from the Armenia bloc and Kocharyan’s lawyer.
“From the lists I have seen, it looks as if they mixed everyone together, split them up and created a single list. They simply wrote down names, mixed them, each picked a party label, and that is how they formed the lists,” Rubinyan said.
‘Let Samvel Karapetyan give up his foreign citizenship’
One of the journalists asked Rubinyan: “Samvel Karapetyan says they are sacrificing everything for Armenia, and you…”. The deputy speaker did not let him finish and replied:
“Is he going to give up his Russian and Cypriot passports for Armenia? Is this a trend among so-called saviours? They all want to ‘save’ the country while holding citizenship of several other states. Archbishop Bagrat [the leader of the opposition movement ‘Sacred Struggle’] held Canadian citizenship. When we said he should give it up, he did not do so. They want to become prime ministers, but they are not ready to give up even foreign citizenship to prove they are not proxies or acting on someone else’s orders.”
Rubinyan did not specify whose interests dollar billionaire Samvel Karapetyan would serve, although most of his assets and businesses are in Russia.
“I do not know whose will he would carry out, but it would certainly not be that of the Armenian people,” he said.
‘Which of them is a new face?’
Gagik Tsarukyan, the leader of Prosperous Armenia, has repeatedly said his party has not just one but several candidates for prime minister. He has insisted that the party has no ties either to former authorities or to the current government. Tsarukyan argues that Armenia needs a “prime minister of the future”.
“It is telling that Tsarukyan speaks about the need for new faces. So who are these new faces? Is Kocharyan a new face? Is Tsarukyan himself a new face? Perhaps he has aged well physically. But what is new about him? Or what is new about the Russian oligarch?” Ruben Rubinyan said.
He also recalled that Samvel Karapetyan’s brother, Karen Karapetyan, led the parliamentary faction of former president Serzh Sargsyan’s Republican Party and later headed his office.
Journalists asked the deputy speaker why Tsarukyan and Karapetyan do not openly say that their candidate for prime minister is Robert Kocharyan.
“Why did Martun Grigoryan, who is now on the Prosperous Armenia list, say during the election campaign in Gyumri that he would not support Vardan Ghukasyan? He wanted to mislead people, win votes, and then he voted for Ghukasyan,” Rubinyan said.
Snap municipal elections were held in Gyumri on 30 March. No party secured 50% plus one vote. The ruling Civil Contract party received the largest share of votes. However, none of the opposition forces agreed to form a coalition with it. Three of the four opposition groups that passed the electoral threshold backed Vardan Ghukasyan, the mayoral candidate from the Communist Party of Armenia.
He believes the opposition forces will “tell fairy tales” and claim they are not connected to each other in order to implement a “Gyumri-2” scenario.
“They want to create a false impression that they have nothing to do with each other. They do this to win votes. Then they will unite and carry out the ‘Gyumri’ scenario. But with one difference. After the original ‘Gyumri’ scenario, Vardan Ghukasyan was arrested on corruption charges six months later. In this case, no one will be arrested, because corruption will become a highly desirable, patriotic and respected activity, like in the old days,” Ruben Rubinyan said.
Armenia’s deputy speaker on “three-headed party of war”