The evident boldness of the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) to bring some degree of autonomy to the political field turned it into a large and tasty morsel hungrily eyed by the other important players.

They want to get their hands on the PAP and the reason is clear.

Any position taken by the PAP, whether to leave or stay in the ruling coalition will lead to a major reshuffling of the political landscape.

Understanding the cards it brings to the table, the PAP is trying to draw the game out and raise the stakes and derive the maximum concessions from the president.

It might all be a farce; a project to create a pseudo-opposition in an attempt to win votes from the opposition electorate. In any event, it all makes sense politically.

The same logic holds true for the recent overtures made by the ANC regarding the PAP.

At the end of last year, when RA President Sargsyan demanded that his coalition partners clarify their positions regarding their support of him in the upcoming presidential election, the ANC noted that if the PAP were to clearly distance itself from former President Robert Sargsyan, it wouldn’t be averse to forming a tandem with it. This idea was voiced every time there was an intensification of interparty intrigue.

At the last ANC rally, Levon Ter-Petrosyan made a specific proposal to the PAP – declare yourself free of Robert Kocharyan and the March 1 tragedy and in favour of free and fair elections and the ANC will be willing to collaborate.

Moreover, singly out the PAP as a force with the potential to form a third political axis, the ANC essentially accepted its second role status and the supremacy of the PAP. I state this because up till now Levon Ter-Petrosyan had always claimed that since the ANC existed there was no possibility of forming a third political front.

There is no common ground between the ANC and PAP – whether political, ideological nor motivational. This precludes any long-term cooperation between them.

Levon Ter-Petrosyan no longer conceals the fact that he views the PAP merely as a tool to destroy the regime from the inside.

Ter-Petrosyan, in his speech, stated that it was not only common for political opponents, even irreconcilable ones, to cooperate on matters of great import but that it was also a political imperative.

He pointed to all the revolutions and national liberation struggles that wouldn’t have succeeded without the united struggle of various political forces.

In the context of political objectives, all this is understandable. HAK merely is suggesting a new methodology and arsenal to achieve the aims it has always adhered to.

The pivotal question we must ask if all and any means are acceptable to reach ones goal. This is more so the case here when we are just not talking about a single political unit like the ANC, but the possible long-term vision of forming a pan-national movement.

Neither this question nor the pan-national movement, in general, are simply plucked from the political sector.

In the first place, they are moral categories. Consequently, suggesting cooperating with the PAP, a member of the ruling coalition, with the aim of removing the same regime from the scene is not only simple-minded, from a purely political context, but is an approach with an underlying manipulative sub-context.

Here, we are not talking about operating with various political forces but with a party that is a member of the ruling coalition that has targeted the ANC with its criticism and charges.

This is not the case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Can the ANC seriously talk about cooperating with a political force whose removal from power has been the rasion d’etre of the ANC?

What, in the end, is the true aim of the ANC and Levon Ter-Petrosyan?

Do they merely want to come to power by destroying the criminal regime, using the PAP and the oligarchs as tools?

Or do they want to rid the country of the social and political diseases that they spoke about when the “movement” came to the fore, issues that they constantly inspired hope in people about for the past 3-4 years.

In this light, the ANC isn’t merely faced with the problem of correcting it relations with the political forces.

Firstly, it must come face to face with the public at large, the people in whose name the ANC reserved the right to speak on behalf of.

Otherwise, those who declare themselves as mere “tools” to be used for the greater good will be regarded as those who have made “tools” out of the people for their own partisan and personal ambitions.