Most likely the Heritage Party will not share its seats on the various electoral committees with the HAK (Armenian National Committee) during the upcoming May 31 Yerevan municipal council elections. The party led by Raffi Hovhannisyan has decided to adopt a strict stance of neutrality in the elections and to not assist HAK in any practical manner. Thus, it aims not to lose its position in the oppositional field and use the fact that it is a parliamentary presence, its only advantage with respect to HAK.

This is the only lever with which Heritage can still keep HAK in a certain degree of dependence and oblige HAK to sit down and come to terms with it. Nevertheless, after the decision by Heritage to not even share its committee seats, HAK isn’t in a rush to carry out the orders of the regime in terms of that party, to accuse it of unprincipled manifestations of behavior. These manifestations came to light immediately after Heritage expressed its intent to participate in the Yerevan city council elections with an independent ticket. In essence, despite the fact that seven political forces will be participating in the elections, in practical terms, two poles have been created. On the one hand there is the opposition, in the guise of HAK. Then there is the regime, represented by the four coalition parties, which have two matters to pursue. First, for each, to garner the maximum number of transient votes whose sum will guarantee a council majority.  At the very least, these forces must receive enough votes in the council elections to arrive at a relative picture that totally portrays the relative distribution of power in the parliament. This will also serve as an indirect method to legitimize and verify the officially recorded results in last year’s presidential elections. In these conditions, it can’t be ruled out that HAK will garner more votes than the HHK (Republican Party of Armenia) does outright. However, the ARF, PAP and OYP, by forming a coalition with the HHK in the “legislative” body of the municipality, the council, will effectively hinder the HAK as a minority; in the same manner it hinders Heritage in the parliament. This tactic to win the game through “temporary defeat” is conducive for the regime. On the one hand, it will show that it accepts the overwhelming advantage that the opposition leader has over its candidate for the mayor. On the other, with the help of its coalition partners, it will push through the election of Beglaryan for mayor and thus solve its problem. Naturally, in this case, HAK’s dependency on its coalition partners increases. There will be compensation to pay in return for services rendered if the operation is achieved through united efforts. The other parties in the coalition will definitely make their demands known to the HHK and to the president. From the start, Serzh Sargsyan was trying to avert such dependency, by attempting to utilize the election for the governing bodies of Yerevan in order to achieve the status of a more independent player. The unexpected move by Ter-Petrosyan to contest the elections forces the HHK to temporarily give up on that maximalist plan and fall back on the services of the pro-regime forces. To avert this trap, HAK must not only score a victory against the HHK but also against all the coalition forces in unison. In the absence of the Heritage Party, the maximalist program sought by the coalition forces to destroy the votes of the opposition would appear to be unrealistic. The second issue is to destroy the votes of the opposition to the extent possible and not to give them serious opportunities to protest the results of the elections. The governing authorities understand very well that this issue will be practically impossible to resolve via the coalition parties because the election, rather than a contest among seven parties, is more a contest between the regime and the opposition; between the HAK and all the remaining participants. In such a set-up, it really doesn’t matter if the regime is represented by four or fourteen parties before the voters. In this light the other two seemingly neutral parties, the People’s Party and the HASK (Socialist Labor Party of Armenia), are in reserve and can be utilized. The HASK presence on the ticket will be used to create a degree of confusion on the part of voters if the regime cannot foil the plans of the opposition to take the elections to a second round. Then too, this method can be used, if and when necessary, to surreptitiously register votes casts for HAK to HASK. What is noteworthy is that the names of representatives of the government nomenclature, from a few ministries, are to be found on the HASK ballot. Against the backdrop of the absence of the Heritage Party, the role of Tigran Karapetyan and his People’s Party assume greater importance. Karapetyan can be used as the man of the moment and fashioned to take over the votes of Heritage, the moderate opposition. No wonder why Karapetyan states that is Raffi Hovhannisyan had participated in the elections he could have taken a portion of his votes. However, this variant of Karapetyan’s can’t be all that effective when we take into account his political standing and eccentric character. These serve to dispel more than attract. Perhaps the authorities won’t feel the need to employ the services of Karapetyan anyway. However, that isn’t their main problem. Both HASK and the People’s Party will try to prevent the election campaign from being placed on a truly political footing. These forces will probably do all to see to make sure that the rank and file voter gets the impression that the Yerevan mayor is being elected merely to repair and clean the streets and control traffic. Tigran Karapetyan has already started to brainwash the voter along these lines. During his latest interview he literally shone by spewing forth a number of populists adages. He declared that Yerevan residents must have supplementary sources of income and that they should be growing tomatoes and cucumbers. This doesn’t only mean that growing tomatoes will be the leitmotif of Karapetyan in the elections. It will also signify that a new fifth column of tomato growers will descend on the patriotic political field, whose cornerstones were laid in the 2008 presidential elections.