WHAT HAPPENED TO 116-YEAR-OLD GRANDPA
Hakob Badalyan
Lragir, Armenia
Nov 6 2006
It remained unclear for the society why the leader of the United
Javakheti Alliance Vahagn Chakhalyan was arrested. There is only
one tangible thing about this arrest – the scandal. Perhaps it is
difficult to suggest that the Armenian government is fond of scandals,
or needs scandals. Therefore, one does not need a special abilities
to understand that the arrest had another, a tacit reason.
Certainly, the official reason should also be taken into account:
illegal crossing of the border of Armenia. But the fact that the
Armenian and Georgian border is still being defined makes this
reason definitely illogical, for it is impossible to cross, legally
or illegally, something that does not exist. This shows once again
that in order to understand Chakhalyan’s case it is necessary to
consider all the developments in turn.
First, before the local election in Javakheti the defense minister of
Armenia, the foreign minister of Armenia and the foreign minister of
Georgia Gela Bejuashvili visiting Armenia secretly had a dinner at
the Parvana Restaurant. The minister of defense Serge Sargsyan had
organized this dinner. It is interesting that the foreign minister
of Armenia was a guest. In other words, his participation was the
decision of Serge Sargsyan, in other words, he could have not invited
Vardan Oskanyan and could have dined with Bejuashvili alone.
Meanwhile, Serge Sargsyan invited him.
Serge Sargsyan could have not invited Vardan Oskanyan, and perhaps he
had better not invited him, because Vardan Oskanyan revealed the level
of engagement of Serge Sargsyan in the Armenian-Georgian relation on
the eve of the local election in Javakheti by revealing the information
on the dinner, and making this private meal the property of the public.
>>From the point of view of civil consciousness Oskanyan was right –
the behavior of government officials should be public except their
private life. However, most probably Vardan Oskanyan was thinking
about his own political fate rather than the civil society. His
revelation probably had two purposes. First, he needed to show that
the subordination is broken in Armenia, namely the defense minister
deals with the foreign minister of the neighboring country, when
the foreign ministry of his own country is an officially operating
agency with its separate line in the state budget. Besides, Oskanyan
was evidently likely to get rid of the status of a participant of a
confidential meeting. Definitely, Vardan Oskanyan was aware of the
things discussed at dinner if, of course, besides the dinner he also
participated in the talk. Consequently, by revealing this meeting
the minister of foreign affairs got rid of responsibility for any
arrangement made during this meeting, even in terms of participation.
The same is with Vardan Oskanyan’s further standpoint on Vahagn
Chakhalyan’s activities. In fact, a foreign citizen is arrested in
Armenia, who is Armenian, meanwhile the foreign minister announces
that he knows very little about this incident because "he was not in
the city". He might as well have said that the battery of his mobile
was low.
It is also interesting that the political force (the official name
is Armenian Revolutionary Federation), which would declare Javakheti
part of Armenia if it could, also kept silent when Chakhalyan was
arrested. It is amazing why this force did not stand up against
the arrest of a person which had merely gone from one part of
the homeland to the other. On the other hand, this can have its
explanation if we remember the young Republican Armen Ashotyan advise
the 116-year-old "grandpa" that the ARF Dashnaktsutyun had better
mind its own business. Although it is a revolutionary approach for
the traditional Armenian thought when a young men advises an elderly
gentlemen, the ARF took this advice with the revolutionarism typical
of it. Why should they care about Vahagn Chakhalyan if he got his 30
percent in Javakheti, whereas Dashnakstutyun is unable to settle the
problem of at least half of it, 15 percent in the next parliament in
the homeland? At first sight, these two questions may seem to have no
relation, and it seems possible to attend to their own 15 percent and
Chakhalyan’s question. But not only there is no love at first sight
but also politics. And Dashnaktsutyun has been watshing politics for
over a century now and surely knows some ways that it does not attend
to both questions at the same time.
Garnik Isagulyan, who had given a news conference only three days
before Chakhalyan was released, also knew something. The adviser
to Robert Kocharyan stated that Chakhalyan would be set free and
everyone would be happy. This is the case when the court of law is
to make a decision. Consequently, the decision had been made earlier
and on a quite different level. And if the decision on releasing
was made earlier and on a different, non-judicial level, it is quite
probable that the decision on arresting also had a formal relation to
the judicial system, in other words, it was made on a quite different
level. The problem is whether the decision on arresting and later the
decision on releasing were made on the same level. Only then can we
say whether these decisions were complementary or one made a knight’s
move, the other took away the rook.