The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) will not enter into an alliance with other political forces ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections, a leader of the party allied to President Serzh Sarkisian said on Monday.
“Dashnaktsutyun will go it alone,” Aghvan Vartanian, who heads the Dashnaktsutyun faction in the Armenian parliament, told journalists.
Vartanian did not rule out the possibility of Dashnaktsutyun striking a new power-sharing deal with Sarkisian and the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) after the elections scheduled for April. He said that will depend on the outcome of the vote.
The party, which is particularly influential in Armenia’s worldwide Diaspora, already cut such a deal with Sarkisian in February, receiving three ministerial portfolios as a result.
“Our agreement [with Sarkisian] is open-ended,” Vartanian stressed when asked about his party’s continued presence in government. “If the results of the parliamentary elections allow that … we have a huge circle of issues which we can solve.”
He also noted in that regard that neither he nor other Dashnaktsutyun leaders are holding pre-elections negotiations at the moment.
One of those leaders, Armen Rustamian, expressed confidence earlier this month that if Dashnaktsutyun participates in the upcoming elections on its own, it will pass the 5 percent vote threshold for being represented in the next National Assembly. The party holds five seats in Armenia’s current 131-member parliament.