ARMENIA’S TER-PETROSIAN SETS STAGE FOR TENSE PRESIDENTIAL VOTE
by Emil Danielyan

EurasiaNet, NY
Oct 29 2007

Photos by Karen Minasyan

After nearly a decade of self-imposed political retirement, Armenia’s
former President Levon Ter-Petrosian is seeking a return to power. His
decision, anticipated for months, renders the outcome of an upcoming
presidential election unpredictable. During the biggest opposition
rally held in years, Ter-Petrosian urged Armenians on October 26
to help him thwart what he portrayed as the handover of power from
President Robert Kocharian to Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian. He
accused the two men of leading a "gangster state" that stifles dissent
and free enterprise. The development is a further indication that the
62-year-old scholar, who led Armenia to independence from the Soviet
Union and earned accolades in the West for his conciliatory line on
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, will be Sarkisian’s main election
challenger. The latter’s victory in the presidential ballot, due
next February or March, was seen by many as a foregone conclusion
after his governing Republican Party won last May’s parliamentary
elections by a landslide. [For details, see EurasiaNet’s Armenia: Vote
2007]. "From now on, I declare myself a candidate for the presidency
of the Republic of Armenia," Ter-Petrosian told about 20,000 people who
gathered in Yerevan’s Liberty Square. His 90-minute speech, repeatedly
interrupted by "Levon! Levon!" chants, offered a damning indictment
of the Kocharian administration’s policies and track record. A large
part of it was devoted to what Ter-Petrosian called the "relentless
plunder" of the population by Kocharian, Sarkisian and their political
associates. "In the last five years, the criminal regime has stolen at
least $3 billion to $4 billion from the people," Ter-Petrosian alleged,
without offering specifics to substantiate the claim. He indicated that
officials enjoy a de facto monopoly over the most lucrative economic
sectors, and receive informal payments from businessmen with close ties
to the government. Ter-Petrosian went on to dismiss as grossly inflated
the double-digit rates of economic growth reported by the Armenian
authorities in recent years. He reaffirmed his belief that Armenia’s
sustainable economic development is impossible without a solution
to the Karabakh conflict. [For background see the Eurasia Insight
archive]. And he again alleged that the Kocharian administration
prefers the Karabakh status quo to cutting a compromise peace deal
with Azerbaijan. Ter-Petrosian resigned in 1998 under pressure from
his key cabinet members, including then Prime Minister Kocharian and
Interior Minister Sarkisian, who resented his strong support for an
international peace plan that called for a gradual settlement of the
conflict, rather than for a package peace plan. The ex-president
pointed to the government’s overall acceptance of peace proposals
that resemble his earlier ideas as a sign that his position was
correct. Other sensitive areas were also raised. The Yerevan rally
was held the day before Armenia marked the eighth anniversary of the
1999 armed attack on parliament that resulted in the deaths of former
parliament speaker Karen Demirchian, former prime minister Vazgen
Sarkisian (no relation to Serzh), and six other officials. Many
Armenians think that the five gunmen had powerful sponsors; some
suspect Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian of masterminding the shootings.

[For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Ter-Petrosian
likewise pointed the finger at Kocharian, blaming the latter for
the bungled criminal investigation into the parliament attack. "The
October [1999] massacre was the main milestone that cleared the
broad way to the formation and development of Kocharian’s regime,"
he said. Neither Kocharian, nor Sarkisian immediately commented
on the allegations. Speaking to journalists several hours before
the Ter-Petrosian rally, the Armenian president shrugged off his
predecessor’s presidential ambitions. "The first president, at least
according to the latest surveys, is not the main opposition candidate
and there are at least two or three opposition figures with higher
approval ratings," he said in televised remarks. "I am convinced that
our people will not want to return to 1995-1996," Kocharian added,
accusing Ter-Petrosian of "ruining" the Armenian economy during his
rule. Armenia’s Gross Domestic Product shrank by more than half in
1992-1993 following the Soviet collapse and the onset of the war in
Karabakh, leaving the country largely cut off from the rest of the
world and paralyzed by a severe energy crisis. While Ter-Petrosian
is still widely associated with the resulting hardship, the strong
attendance at the October 26 rally suggests that many disaffected
Armenians are now ready to at least listen to their former leader.

His harsh attacks on the current government, voiced in a
characteristically academic manner, appeared to impress many undecided
rally participants. "Before the speech I was dithering, but am now
astonished," said one young man. "I’ve never heard such a speech
before. He spoke with the precision of a machine." Vasil Khanaghian,
a disabled Karabakh war veteran from a village in southern Armenia,
made up his mind before the rally. "I won the war under the leadership
of Levon, and not those rascals," he explained, referring to President
Kocharian and Prime Minister Sarkisian. But not everyone in the crowd
was convinced. One elderly man, who did not want to give his name,
was unhappy with Ter-Petrosian’s failure to talk about controversial
episodes from his own presidency such as the flight of his "thieving"
former Interior Minister Vano Siradeghian, who left Armenia in 2000
to avoid prosecution for murder.

Ter-Petrosian loyalists, meanwhile, are increasingly buoyed by their
leader’s return to active politics. "If this momentum is maintained
during the election campaign, his victory will become inevitable,"
Aghasi Yenokian, a local pundit sympathetic to the ex-president, told
EurasiaNet. Opposition leaders, many of whom have been in talks with
Ter-Petrosian for months about his return to politics, argue that
the government is increasingly ill at ease with the prospect. On
October 23, police detained a dozen pro-Ter-Petrosian activists,
among them two newspaper editors, who were publicizing the planned
demonstration in downtown Yerevan. They were released the next morning
after four-hour negotiations between Ter-Petrosian and senior police
officers. The activists had decided to take to the streets after
none of Armenia’s leading TV stations loyal to Kocharian agreed to
broadcast paid rally advertisements. One regional TV channel, which
aired a September speech by Ter-Petrosian that was his first in a
decade, now claims to be harassed by security and tax officials.

Transportation was also reportedly restricted between Yerevan and other
parts of the country hours before the landmark rally. In an October
25 editorial, the pro-opposition Yerevan daily Aravot argued that the
Armenian authorities were far more tolerant of dissent in the run-up
to the May parliamentary elections than in the current presidential
campaign. "They either find the upcoming elections more important,
or are scared of Levon," it said. Editor’s Note: Emil Danielyan is a
freelance journalist based in Yerevan.

Karen Minasyan is a freelance photographer, also in Yerevan