TER-PETROSYAN RAFFLES ALL THE OPTIONS
Armen Tsatouryan

Hayots Ashkharh Daily
Oct 10 2007
Armenia

Ex-President Ter-Petrosyan’s recent activeness has raised a certain
hue-and-cry among the politicians as well as in society.

This, however, is not a manifestation of a specific political demand;
it is rather a natural interest in a person who has already earned
his place in history.

With the purpose of transforming the positive tendencies of such
interest into a serious political asset and "putting it into practice",
the ex-President is trying to form 3 camps on the political arena.

The first is the army of his own proponents, and we believe that the
fact of its being limited is obvious to him too.

The second is the issue of defining the non-interferers and neutrals,
as this is a tool aiming to restrict the greater chances of the ruling
authority and its candidate.

And as to the third, rival camp, Ter-Petrosyan’s attitude towards
it still remains on the plane of a psychological war, since this
is an attempt of stirring anxiety over the "permanent rotations"
and breaking his unity.

We believe the principal goal of such kind of tactics is the solution
of a third problem, because Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s current maneuvers do
not promise serious results in case of relying upon the other options.

The reason is obvious. Of the 3 camps mentioned above, the first
consists only of Mr. Ter-Petrrosyan’s party members and other factions
that tend to join him in case he proposes his candidacy.

Among them are "Republic" party, the Armenian Democratic Party and
others. And this is rather insufficient.

As to the second camp, ARFD and "Rule of Law" are the first parties
Mr. Ter-Petrosyan wishes to see in it. And the meetings which have
been organized or are going to be organized by them aim to demonstrate
the ex-President’s broad-mindedness.

As regards third camp which consists of the RPA and "Prosperous
Armenia", futile attempts are being made to isolate them from the
political arena, to reveal and sharpen internal discordances based
on the theoretical assumption the state machinery and parties have a
great number of human resources who have been there since the times
Mr. Ter-Petrosyan was in power.

However, the attempts of hurting this "main target" have not yet
produced any result.

What chances of maneuvers can the ex-President have during the coming
months, in view of this formula that divides the political arena
into three parts? It is clear that in view of the limited political
resources it is impossible to think of Mr. Ter-Petrosyan’s serious role
in the presidential elections. The extra-Parliamentary parties which
are willing to become his political support need help themselves. So,
Mr. Ter-Petrosyan’s "political reanimation" is necessary for the
leaders of those parties and not for the ex-President. Realizing
this fact, Ter-Petrosyan is trying to undertake the next step: to
form a new, non-partisan format, required for initiating a new and
wide public-political movement. For that purpose, the first method he
applied was the attempt of gaining favor among the businessmen and
rejecting the term "oligarch", a labeling that is often associated
with those people’s names. And he did that through his September 21
speech. His next steps are related to the efforts of recruiting the
influential representatives of intelligentsia. The result in this
case was strictly limited too.

Since the overwhelming majority of society has an inert attitude
towards the "rotations" initiated by Mr. Ter-Petrosyan, there only
remains the option of referring to the past in order to make movement
develop. The recent attempts of reanimating "Karabakh" committee come
to prove that by initiating a series of meetings Mr. Ter-Petrosyan
has not managed to reveal a "critical mass" with the help of which it
might be possible to create something. Therefore, there remains the
third option: the trumpet and the fists clenched for the liberation
of Karabakh in 1988. The only difference is that this time those
fists will be directed at "liberating" Armenia from Karabakh.

However, by and large each of those activists is now engaged in
introducing himself/herself, and it is only Vazgen Manoukyan that
remains on the political arena with his small team. Therefore,
Mr. Ter-Petrpsyan’s efforts promise strictly limited results in this
respect too.

Moreover, if the political reanimation of "Karabakh" committee pursues
a goal to "liberate" Armenia from Karabakh, the new "advent" of the
veterans may become the negation of "Union", the task to which they
committed themselves in 1988. And this kind of primitive self-negation
by "Karabakh" committee cannot provide chances for initiating a wide
public-political movement.

In such situation, the only factor is the possible flaws of the ruling
authority or the theoretical assumption that certain discordances
might emerge inside it. And Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s team is now making
persistent efforts in that direction. We believe this is the real
in-depth goal continuously experimented by Mr. Ter-Petrosyan within the
past one-month period with the help of diverse political technologies.

Therefore, there is no need to be surprised by the fact that Levon
Ter-Petrosyan invents some original step once a week, because the
diversity and consistency of those steps can, at least for some period
of time, make the public direct its attention to the political team
which has built its calculations based upon the possibility of the
rival’s defeat or the expected flaws and omissions.

And when all the options of various rotations are ruled out,
Ter-Petrosyan is sure to confess that his nomination has no public
demand in Armenia, and he will desperately stake on another candidate.