(This post was updated at 5:32am EST, February 11.)
Wounded Armenian presidential candidate Paruyr Hayrikian has changed his mind, yet again, about asking for a delay in Armenia's February 18 presidential vote. After personally filing a request on February 10 with Armenia's Constitutional Court to postpone the vote by two weeks, he about-faced on February 11, when the Court was expected to discuss the appeal, and withdrew his petition.
Hayrikian's campaign had earlier indicated that, if it managed to make a deal for a last-minute alliance with two other opposition candidates (Heritage Party's Raffi Hovhanissian and Liberty Party's Grant Bagratian) about a united candidate, it could rescind its request for a delayed election.
Bagratian, who has questioned Hayrikian's opposition to the government, had responded that, if such a deal is made, then Hayrikian himself would first need to withdraw his candidacy, PanArmenian.net [3] reported. The Heritage Party stated that the proposal would need to be discussed.
Whether or not such a deal has now come about was not immediately clear. Reasons for the change of mind -- by our count, the third in the 11 days since he was shot in a supposed assassination attempt on January 31 -- remain murky.
In comments to PanArmenian.net, Hayrikian touched on an earlier theme to explain his reasoning -- the belief that a postponed vote could help Armenia's "enemies."
"The important thing is not to allow that the enemies of our country could influence the [election] processes in the country," he told the news service.
Why that concern was apparently less important yesterday was also not clear, although Hayrikian indicated that he had filed a petition then since it was his last chance to do so before the vote.
The Constitutional Court would have had four days to make a ruling, RFE/RL [4] reported; a timeline that could have kept Armenia hanging up until nearly the very eve of the vote. Hayrikian earlier had cited poor health following the attack [5] to justify his request, although his ability to keep on politicking appears to be in robust shape.
Initially viewed as a political snoozer [6], the election -- or, at least, its date -- became a matter of intense speculation after the attack on Hayrikian, which was classified as an assassination attempt.
(Two men on February 7 were arrested and confessed to orchestrating the shooting, but their supposed motive is not clear.)
Even with Hayrikian's request for a delay now gone, don't look for that speculation to end anytime soon...