Snap elections failing, the Armenian National Congress (ANC) will seek to secure a “solid” presence in the National Assembly in next year’s polls to launch a legal impeachment process against President Serzh Sargsyan, ANC leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan said on Friday.

Speaking before several thousand supporters in Yerevan’s central Liberty Square, the ex-president said that his opposition alliance was still very much committed to making every effort to force the authorities to hold early elections, but stressed that regardless of the turn of events they should also be ready to deal seriously with “mechanical” issues of organizing fair elections.

“Domestic political struggle in Armenia is entering a pre-election stage,” said Ter-Petrosyan. “If we fail to get Serzh Sargsyan to resign in the time to come – and nothing can be ruled out in politics – then the ANC will seek to secure such a solid presence in the National Assembly that would enable it alone or with other allies to raise the issue of impeaching Serzh Sargsyan.”

Under the Constitution of Armenia (Article 57), a resolution to remove the president from office can be passed by the National Assembly by a two-thirds majority vote of the total number of deputies, based on a relevant conclusion of the Constitutional Court sought before that by at least a majority of the deputies.

Almost all speakers at the rally referred to the example of toppled Arab regimes, in particular of Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the latest violent death of Libya’s longtime ruler Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Yet, they stopped short of explicitly calling for a violent overthrow of authorities.

Hundreds of opposition supporters took part in a more than weeklong sitting strike in Liberty Square beginning September 30. The opposition then said it would consider staging more “nonstop” protests unless their demands for early elections were met soon.

At the latest rally Ter-Petrosyan, however, stopped short of calling for immediate large-scale protests. Instead the opposition marched through central streets of Yerevan.

The ANC scheduled its next rally for November 25 when, Ter-Petrosyan said, it will specify its further mode of action.

Nonstop protests staged by Ter-Petrosyan supporters in the wake of the disputed February 2008 presidential election resulted in violent clashes with law-enforcement in which ten people were killed. The crackdown led to Armenia’s deepest political crisis since independence.