TER-PETROSIAN DECLARES PRESIDENTIAL BID IN YEREVAN RALLY
By Emil Danielyan
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 26 2007
Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian completed his political comeback
late Friday with an emphatic announcement of his participation in
the forthcoming presidential elections made in front of more than
20,000 people attending his first rally in more than a decade. In a
90-minute speech in Yerevan’s Liberty Square, he reiterated his fierce
criticism of Armenia’s current leadership, again describing it as a
"criminal regime which is corrupt from top down." Ter-Petrosian also
said that President Robert Kocharian and Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian
now accept the kind of a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh which he
advocated in 1997-1998 and which they rejected as "defeatist." "I
intended to make my final decision on the eve of the start of the
electoral process," Ter-Petrosian told the crowd that repeatedly
interrupted the speech with "Levon! Levon!" chants.
"However, repressions which the authorities unleashed against my
supporters recently as well as the huge energy of this rally make
that decision urgent. Therefore, from now on I declare myself a
candidate to the presidency of the Republic of Armenia." "From
now on, any repression or any act of terror by tax bodies against
my supporters will be deemed a criminal violation of the electoral
rights of citizens and will be presented as such to both our public
and international bodies," he added to rapturous applause.
Ter-Petrosian spent four hours at a police station in Yerevan earlier
this week negotiating the release of a dozen loyalists arrested on
Tuesday while publicizing his rally. His supporters say the "illegal"
police actions testify to growing government fear of his presidential
bid. The strong attendance of the rally will reinforce their belief
that he will be Sarkisian’s main challenger in the elections due in
February or March and can defeat Kocharian’s preferred successor. As
was the case during his previous public speech made on September 21,
Ter-Petrosian did not mince words to express his attitude towards the
country’s current leaders, saying that their power is based on tight
control of the security apparatus, the judicial system and electronic
media as well as an "atmosphere of fear." "For them the homeland is a
conquered territory or business entity," he charged. Ter-Petrosian
elaborated on this claim by accusing Kocharian, Sarkisian and
their inner circle of personally controlling the most lucrative
forms of economic activity through direct ownership of business or
"state racketeering." "The three main principles of the capitalist or
market-based economy have been breached: creating equal opportunities,
ensuring fair competition and protecting private property," he
said. "Otherwise, in which other country can an ordinary bus driver get
so rich in one or two years that he is able to make tens of millions
of dollars in investments not in his native Artsakh (Karabakh)
but in the United States of America? Or how can a 25-year-old
young man become one of Armenia’s ten wealthiest businessmen just
two or three years after graduating from university?" he asked,
clearly referring to Sarkisian’s controversial brother Aleksandr and
Kocharian’s son Sedrak. "In the last five years, the criminal regime
has stolen at least three to four billion dollars from the people,"
he charged. "If that sum had been invested in Armenia we would have
had a qualitatively different country. If it had been invested in
Artsakh it would have already been independent." Ter-Petrosian went on
to dismiss as fraudulent official statistics that show the Armenian
economy expanding at a double-digit rate for the past six years. He
said economic growth has been much slower and has largely resulted from
remittances from hundreds of thousands of Armenians living abroad. He
went on to slam Yerevan-based representatives of the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund for regularly praising the Kocharian
administration’s economic track record. He claimed that they are
well aware of the real state of affairs in the economic sphere but
admit it only in their confidential reports sent to Washington. The
Ter-Petrosian rally came the day before the eighth anniversary of the
October 1999 attack on the Armenian parliament which left then Prime
Minister Vazgen Sarkisian, parliament speaker Karen Demirchian and six
other officials dead. That was the reason why it also featured two
other opposition speakers: Demirchian’s son Stepan and Sarkisian’s
brother Aram. The latter reaffirmed his and his radical opposition
Hanrapetutyun party’s strong support for Ter-Petrosian return to
power. The still mysterious killings were another major theme of
Ter-Petrosian’s speech, with the 62-year-old ex-president comparing
them to the April 1915 arrest and subsequent execution of hundreds
of intellectuals in Istanbul which marked the start of the Armenian
genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Ter-Petrosian effectively implicated
Kocharian in the 1999 attack, saying that the latter greatly benefited
from it and obstructed the search for possible masterminds of the
shootings. "Willy-nilly Kocharian directed all suspicions at himself,
which means he must have had serious reasons to take such a risk,"
he said, adding: "The October massacre was the main development that
cleared the broad way to the formation and development of Kocharian’s
regime." Similar allegations have also been made by relatives and
friends of the assassinated leaders.
Kocharian and his allies have always dismissed them. They have argued
in particular that Nairi Hunanian, the leader of the five gunmen who
burst into the Armenian parliament building eight years, insisted
during his trial that he had masterminded the shock attack.
Ter-Petrosian noted, however, that in his initial pre-trial
testimony Hunanian implicated Aleksan Harutiunian, the then chief
of Kocharian’s staff who now runs Armenian state television,
in the killings. Harutiunian’s subsequent release from jail was
illegal, he claimed. Predictably, Ter-Petrosian also stood by his
view that Armenia’s sustainable development hinges on a compromise
solution to the Karabakh conflict. "Until that problem is solved,
until the blockades strangling us are lifted, until relations with
our immediate neighbors are normalized and until our country is not
integrated into regional and international systems, Armenia will not
be able to develop and get stronger in accordance with the demands
of the contemporary world," he said. Ter-Petrosian had been forced
to resign in February 1998 by his key ministers led by then Prime
Minister Kocharian for advocating an international peace that called
for a gradual resolution of the Karabakh dispute and indefinitely
delayed agreement on the disputed enclave’s status. Kocharian and
his allies, by contrast, stood for a package peace deal that would
solve all contentious issues at once and formalize Armenian control of
Karabakh. Nonetheless, the Armenian authorities did largely accept the
international mediator’s existing peace proposals that also call for
a step-by-step settlement. They argue that unlike the 1997 plan, the
existing plan makes it clear that Karabakh’s status will be determined
in a referendum of self-determination. It sets no time frame for the
holding of such a vote, though. Ter-Petrosian dismissed the proposed
referendum as a "face-saving ambiguous provision."
"Thus, after having wasted so many years … the current authorities
of Armenia have quietly and secretly agreed to a plan which they
had diligently presented and defeatist and treacherous in the past,"
he said. Ter-Petrosian claimed at the same time that Kocharian has
never been committed to changing the Karabakh status quo and, contrary
to the mediators’ hopes, will not sign up to the proposed peace deal
before completing his final term in office. Kocharian supporters will
counter that he has accepted on the whole all of the proposals made by
the OSCE Minsk Group since 1998. They are also bound to point out that
Ter-Petrosian did not mention in his speech the controversial episodes
of his own rule that lasted from 1990-1998. The period was marked by
a surge in government corruption and elections criticized as deeply
flawed by Western observers. Ter-Petrosian famously ordered troops
to the streets of Yerevan in September 1996 to suppress opposition
protests against his hotly disputed reelection. He insists that the
vote was not rigged. Ter-Petrosian hinted on Friday that he will
admit mistakes in his further public pronouncements but insisted that
he never lied to Armenians. "I have never hidden the truth from the
people, no matter how bitter it is," he said. "I have never given
false promises and engaged in populism or demagoguery. And I am not
going to betray those principles. "Let that be seen as an unbeneficial
political behavior. Let that affect my rating. I am who I am and who
I will be.’ "I was like that in 1988 on this podium," he continued,
referring to his leadership of the popular movement for Armenia’s
unification with Karabakh. "And you understood and trusted me and my
comrades from the Karabakh Committee, the result of which has been an
independent Armenia and a liberated Artsakh. I am absolutely certain
that you will understand and trust this time as well."