Gagik Tsarukyan, the leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party, has declared his resignation today, leading to elections for a new leader for the first time in the party's history. As his final political gesture, he proposed the secretary of the party Naira Zograbyan as the new leader. Gaining almost unanimous votes, she declared the party's opposition alignment.
Alexander Markarov, the director of the Armenian branch of the Institute of CIS Countries, believes that Tsarukyan's resignation was a big loss for the party. He reminded that the party was the project of second President Robert Kocharyan and under full control of Tsarukyan. Without financial injections from Tsarukyan, the expert believes, the party will lose seats in the parliament. Consequently, Markarov goes on, Prosperous Armenia will no longer be the political force it used to in the previous two electoral cycles. The analyst reminded that the Armenian opposition had not come up with a positive program to consolidate it. The attempt by the Armenian National Congress to use the resource base of Prosperous Armenia created a negative coalition focused on opposing the ruling Republican Party. Markarov said that Prosperous Armenia was trying to join other parties, but it may weaken its resource base.
Levon Zurabyan, the head of the parliamentary faction of the Armenian National Congress, expressed confidence that President Serzh Sargsyan had counterattacked the "trio" trying to launch a campaign of protests against him. He reminded that general mobilization had been declared on February 20 to instigate people to demand Sargsyan's resignation. According to Zurabyan, heavy pressure was put on Tsarukyan and his party just a few days before the protests, over 500 people were detained, businessmen and anyone with sympathies towards the party were targets of the tax and customs services.
Zurabyan believes that Tsarukyan's resignation was a blow to the opposition. The alliance of the National Congress and Prosperous Armenia within the framework of the politological analysis of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, made on November 25, 2011, was the main mobilizing factor of the public to fight against Sargsyan, the expert assumes. Since then, people have had no hopes for off-year presidential and parliamentary polls, formation of a legal government or any radical changes the population needed. Zurabyan added that 300,000 people had left the country in 7 years of Sargsyan's presidency, comparing the mass migration with an exodus of the population.
