The Number of Armenia’s Republican Party Members and Some Arithmetic

On January 26th Republican Party Council meeting, Serzh Sargsyan, touching upon the topic of people leaving the party, made an announcement that 11 thousand people have joined the party in the last few months.

Since this is not the first questionable statement related the number of members of the Republican party, we have been keeping an eye on the number of members of the Republican party (and not only) since December.

Thus, according to letter referenced No.12-012 from the Republican Party Organizing Committee Chairman Ruben Tadevosyan, the number of members of the ruling party was 158,406 people, as of 14 December 2016. According to the letter, about another 7000 applications from citizens are under consideration at RPA local offices. According to yet another letter (ref. No. 02-002) from the same Republican Party official, as of February 1, 2017, the number of party members amounted to 159,301 people, while the number of applications under consideration – 6000.

In other words, over the last six months, about 895 have joined the Republican Party.

And although it is difficult to say exactly what Serzh Sargsyan meant under “the last few months,” the Republican officials insist that the flow of citizens started after the Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan announced his intention to join the Republican Party. But that was about two months ago, on November 24, 2016. And as mentioned above, the number of people joining the ruling party during 1,5 months out of that two month period, does not reach even a thousand.

Moreover, according to the letters received from the Republican Party, one can argue that in the last six months, there almost have not been any new applications to join the party … Out of 7000 applications around 900 were granted, while 6000 are still under consideration. And the number of members has increased by 895.

P.S. As a reminder, on November 26, 2016, the National Republican Party spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov said that after PM Karen Karapetyan’s submitted application to join the party, 7000 people decided to join the party as well, all in one day. But it was very quickly revealed that those 7,000 applications had in fact been submitted in a much longer period of time.

And in fact, now it turns out that about 6000 out of those 7000 applications still remain under consideration (according to the letters from the Chairman of RPA Organizing Committee).