FORMER PRESIDENT TER-PETROSSIAN UNVEILS MANIFESTO IN ARMENIAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE
The New Anatolian, Turkey
Jan 16 2007
Turkish observers are closely watching the developments in the
upcoming Armenian presidential elections as former president Levon
Ter-Petrossian made public his election campaign manifesto.
Ter-Petrossian says if he wins in the February 19 presidential
elections he will turn Armenia into a "normal" state where governments
are formed as a result of free elections and respect laws, human
rights, and free enterprise.
The 16-page document also reaffirms his earlier bitter criticism
of the country’s current leadership, affirming that an election
victory for Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian’s would be "tantamount to
a national disaster."
One week earlier, Ter-Petrossian’s national campaign headquarters,
to be managed by former Foreign Minister Aleksandr Arzoumanian, opened
in Yerevan. Its coordinating council, which comprises representatives
of some of the opposition parties allied with Ter-Petrossian, held
its first meeting and appointed the heads of its territorial branches
in Yerevan on December 29. As of January 8, Ter-Petrossian has opened
local election headquarters in each of Armenia’s 11 provinces, Noyan
Tapan reported.
It was decided that the Ter-Petrossian campaign in Yerevan will be
run by Khachatur Sukiasian, a wealthy parliamentarian who has been
facing a government crackdown on his businesses ever since expressing
support last September for Ter-Petrossian’s comeback bid. Sukiasian
will oversee the work of Ter-Petrossian campaign offices in each of the
city’s 10 administrative districts. Among the heads of those offices
are former Interior Minister Suren Abrahamian and Pargev Ohanian, a
prominent judge who was controversially dismissed by President Robert
Kocharian last fall after acquitting two businessmen who accused the
State Customs Committee of corruption and extortion.
Ter-Petrosian’s preelection speeches so far have analyzed in depth
controversial episodes from his 1991-98 presidency as well as the
current Armenian government’s track record. Those evaluations, coupled
with a retrospective look at the last few decades of Armenian history,
make up a large part of the published manifesto.
Ter-Petrossian, who turned 63 on January 9, again denounces the
Kocharian administration as a corrupt and criminal regime that
tolerates no dissent and is motivated by self-enrichment at the
expense of a downtrodden population.
The document also lays out his vision for Armenia’s future. It says
that, if elected, Ter-Petrossian will strive for the "dismantling
of the existing kleptrocratic system" and the establishment of
"full-fledged democracy" anchored in free elections, protection of
human rights, and judicial independence. In addition, law-enforcement
bodies and the military would no longer be used as tools for government
repression.
Ter-Petrossian’s longtime critics, however, see few fundamental
differences between him and Armenia’s leaders. They point, among other
things, to the Ter-Petrossian administration’s failure to hold a single
election recognized as free and fair by the international community.
Ter-Petrossian’s socioeconomic agenda is based on three key principles
of market-based economics that he believes are absent in Armenia: a
level playing field for all businesspeople; fair economic competition;
and absolute protection of private property. While pledging to retrieve
what he says are huge amounts of money "stolen from the people"
by wealthy businessmen with ties to the government, Ter-Petrossian
says that if elected, he would not seek a massive "redistribution
of property."
Ter-Petrossian further commits himself to launching a crackdown on
widespread tax evasion that he says should primarily target large
corporate taxpayers that are believed to grossly underreport their
earnings thanks to government patronage. "According to foreign experts,
only 22 percent of the state budget’s tax revenues is currently paid
by large entrepreneurs, whereas [that proportion] should have stood
at 75 percent," his campaign platform claims.
In that regard, the document reaffirms Ter-Petrossian’s pledge to
help abolish a government-drafted law that took effect on January 1
and that will make it much harder for small Armenian firms to qualify
for so-called "simplified tax." Payment of that tax has exempted them
from other, heftier duties.
According to Ter-Petrossian, these and other economic measures
contained in his platform would double Armenia’s gross domestic product
and triple its state budget in the next five years. "Needless to say
that in the event of the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,
the lifting of the economic blockades [of Armenia,] and the opening
of the Turkish-Armenian border, much more impressive results could be
expected," reads the platform. During the 1996 presidential election
campaign, members of the Ter-Petrossian leadership poured scorn on
rival candidate Vazgen Manukian’s pledge to raise GDP by a similar
amount.
Responding to Ter-Petrossian’s grave allegations, Kocharian and
Sarkisian have been particularly scathing about his handling of the
first years of Armenia’s painful transition to the free market. The
Armenian economy shrunk by half in 1992-93 following the breakup of
the Soviet Union and the outbreak of wars in Karabakh and elsewhere
in the South Caucasus. Kocharian has charged that the Ter-Petrossian
administration was primarily responsible for turning Armenia into
"one of the poorest countries" in the world.
In his manifesto, Ter-Petrossian reaffirms his belief that the collapse
of the Soviet economy was inevitable and that it was more drastic in
Armenia than in other former Soviet republics because of the Karabakh
war and the crippling blockades imposed by Azerbaijan and Turkey,
as well as turmoil in Georgia. But he admits that many Armenians do
not and will not accept this explanation. "When a person is worse off
today than he was yesterday, no logical explanation can satisfy him,"
he says.
The document is far less specific on foreign-policy matters, with
Ter-Petrossian saying only that he would strengthen Armenia’s relations
with Russia, Georgia and Iran and promising "constructive efforts"
to normalize ties with Azerbaijan and Turkey.
On the Karabakh conflict, the manifesto says Ter-Petrossian would
display the "political will" to achieve a compromise peace deal with
Azerbaijan that would enable the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to
exercise their "right to self-determination." It does not specify
Ter-Petrossian’s position on international mediators’ existing peace
proposals.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress