Republic Party leader Sarkisian charges that the government investigation of the 1999 assassinations of senior political figures was slipshod.
Forty-six-year old Aram Sarkisian was thrust into politics by the October 1999 assassination of his brother, the late Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisian. A factory director and an engineer by training, Sarkisian had no previous political experience when he was named prime minister shortly after his brother's death. After multiple disagreements with Robert Kocharian, however, he remained in office for roughly six months.
Sarkisian's departure from government (and from membership in the Republican Party of Armenia) led to the creation of a new party, Hanrapetutiun (Republic), easily the most radical of the groups opposing Kocharian's government. For Sarkisian, this opposition has personal motives, too. The party leader believes that President Kocharian did not fully investigate the assassination of his brother and seven other officials and parliamentarians. This enmity became even deeper after Aram's other brother, Armen, was found guilty of organizing the 2002 murder of the head of public television, allegedly for involvement in his brother's death.
The Republic Party is the lone opposition party not to have returned to parliament after the failure of the 2003-2004 boycott. Since the 2003 parliamentary election, Sarkisian has continued to state that a "power shift" in Armenia is inevitable. Observers question how long party members and sympathetic voters are likely to wait for that moment. One group of party leaders, headed by a former Yerevan mayor, has now left to create its own party.
Pro-Government:
Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian
Gagik Tsarukian
Vahan Hovhannisian
Opposition:
Artur Baghdasarian
Stepan Demirchian
Artashes Geghamian
Raffi Hovannisian
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