VAZGEN MANUKYAN IS READY FOR AN UNEXPECTED STEP

Lragir.am
30-05-2007 17:12:47

"If we fail to put up a single candidate for the presidential
election in 2008, it will be impossible to bring people together
and reduce vote tampering and win the election," said the leader
of the National Democratic Union Vazgen Manukyan on May 30 at the
Pastark Club regarding the presidential election in 2008. He says the
opposition need not necessarily put up a single candidate from the very
beginning. It is possible to come together one or two months before the
voting. As to the personality of the single candidate, Vazgen Manukyan
says not every leader can be the single candidate of the opposition. "
Sometimes the impression is that if everyone come together and put up
anyone, they will win. No. Not every candidate will win the election,
others may feel humiliated to come together around any candidate,
not every candidate will accept ambitions painfully. And not every
single candidate will manage to rule the country in this complicated
situation without crashing the state after the victory," Vazgen
Manukyan says. He does not hide that he considers himself a single
candidate who stands a chance to win the election, and had stated
before the election that only he can defeat Serge Sargsyan. The leader
of the NDU does not hide that he cannot see a suitable single candidate
among the figures who stated likelihood to run for presidency.

Vazgen Manukyan agrees and also disagrees with Hrant Bagratyan who
held a news conference a few days ago at the National Press Club. "I
think for the single candidate the opposition need not come together
and make a decision artificially, discussing who is taller, who is
more handsome, who is more eloquent, it should be left up to people
to decide. But if people trust several people equally, in this
case it is necessary to think who could solve the other problems
effectively," the leader of the NDU says. As to Bagratyan’s remark
that the candidates who lost once should not run in the presidential
election again, especially that there is no such practice in the world,
Vazgen Manukyan says in democratic countries there is such practice,
and perhaps Hrant Bagratyan is not competent enough in what he spoke
about. Vazgen Manukyan cites the example of the U.S. President Nixon,
who lost several elections and was finally elected president. Besides,
the leader of the NDU says he won in 1996, and the government used
tanks against him. Vazgen Manukyan also says he knows why Bagratyan
thinks so. Manukyan thinks Bagratyan wants to clear space for
someone else to be nominated. Reporters think this someone is Levon
Ter-Petrosyan. In answer to the question if he will withdraw his
candidacy if Levon Ter-Petrosyan is nominated, Vazgen Manukyan says no.

He says, however, that even though he considers himself as a suitable
single candidate, he does not know another person for whom he would
withdraw his candidacy. But he says: "I will take any step, any
unexpected step for a change of the government in Armenia through
the presidential election." The leader of the NDU says, however,
that unexpectedness will be in the framework of the Constitution.

Vazgen Manukyan also voiced the counterarguments the government
propaganda offers or is going to offer regarding the presidential
election in 2008. The first is that the personality of the president
becomes irrelevant because the amended Constitution has vested
more deciding powers in the parliament, and the Republican holds
the absolute parliament majority, and the opposition cannot do
anything. A similar thesis has been set forward by Shavarsh Kocharyan
who used to be in the same party with Vazgen Manukyan. Vazgen Manukyan
says if people elect president, an illegitimate parliament will be
weak. The other propagandist counterargument is that the president
of the opposition and the Republican parliament will clash, like
in Ukraine. According to the leader of the NDU, it is nonsensical
to threaten with the repetition of the Yuschenko-Yanukovich
confrontation. Nothing of the kind will happen in Armenia because
what is underway in Ukraine is not a conflict of persons but the
conflict of people divided into two parts, pro-West and pro-Russian,
says the leader of the NDU. There is nothing of the kind in Armenia.