Gagik Tsarukian Takes Sides

With Levon Ter Petrossian’s campaign team promising that the government structure would collapse with senior figures defecting to their candidate’s side, the most obvious sign of that would have been if oligarchs such as Gagik Tsarukian shifted allegiances. Indeed, controlling the second largest faction in the Armenian National Assembly through his Prosperous Armenia party, Tsarukian isn’t just the country’s richest man, he’s also one of the most powerful.

No wonder that Ter-Petrossian set out to court the MP, oligarch and former arm wrestling champion even if during last year’s parliamentary election his main backers, Republic and Impeachment, considered him almost as if evil personified.

Ter-Petrosian claimed that Gagik Tsarukian will end up losing his huge fortune if Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian becomes Armenia’s next president as he campaigned in areas north of Yerevan where the influential tycoon holds sway.

“I have come here to preach morality to Gagik Tsarukian because I believe that that person has not acted against his people to date,” he told hundreds of people attending his rally in the town of Abovian. “That person has morality. I will not preach morality to Serzh Sarkisian, Robert Kocharian and their cronies because they have no morality.”

“Dear Mr. Gagik Tsarukian, here are your people,” continued Ter-Petrosian. “Today you will make a choice. Either you will stand alongside your people, or will be doomed to remain a slave and be despised by these people forever. The choice is yours.”

Noticeable by his absence from Sargsyan rallies, reports last week finally indicated that Tsarukian hadn’t been convinced by Ter-Petrossian’s warning and offer to unite. Today that was confirmed by the sight of Tsarukian alongside senior members of Sargsyan’s Republican party at the prime minister’s Liberty Square pre-election campaign rally.

Photo: © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2008