TER-PETROSIAN COURTS PRO-KOCHARIAN TYCOON
By Ruzanna Stepanian
Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
Feb 05 2008
Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian on Tuesday heaped praise on
one of Armenia’s wealthiest businessmen close to President Robert
Kocharian and urged him to defect to the opposition camp.
Ter-Petrosian claimed that Gagik Tsarukian will end up losing his
huge fortune if Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian becomes Armenia’s
next president as he campaigned in areas north of Yerevan where the
influential tycoon holds sway.
"I have come here to preach morality to Gagik Tsarukian because
I believe that that person has not acted against his people to
date," he told hundreds of people attending his rally in the town
of Abovian. "That person has morality. I will not preach morality to
Serzh Sarkisian, Robert Kocharian and their cronies because they have
no morality."
"Dear Mr. Gagik Tsarukian, here are your people," continued
Ter-Petrosian. "Today you will make a choice. Either you will stand
alongside your people, or will be doomed to remain a slave and be
despised by these people forever. The choice is yours."
Ter-Petrosian already issued a similar call to Tsarukian and other
government-connected tycoons during a December rally in Yerevan. He
said they will run the constant risk of losing their assets as long
as Kocharian-Sarkisian duo remains in power. The ex-president went
further during his subsequent campaign speeches, saying that all of
them will become "tramps" if Sarkisian wins the February 19 election.
None of the so-called "oligarchs" has publicly indicated support
for his presidential bid, however. Tsarukian is thought to have
particularly close ties with Armenia’s leadership and Kocharian in
particular. He is also the founding leader of the pro-Kocharian
Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), which boasts the second largest
faction in parliament.
Several BHK lawmakers on Tuesday joined their colleagues from
Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK) in voicing support for the prime
minister and condemning Ter-Petrosian during a special parliament
session during which deputies can read out statements on any issue.
Armenian state television is obliged to broadcast those statements in
full. The collective verbal assault on Ter-Petrosian launched by more
than a dozen BHK and HHK parliamentarians was a further indication that
the authorities consider the ex-president their most dangerous foe.
Ter-Petrosian, meanwhile, stuck to his tough anti-government
rhetoric both in Abovian and other, smaller local towns. Speaking
in Nor Hajn, home to most of Armenia’s diamond-processing plants,
he again implicated Sarkisian and Kocharian in the 1999 armed attack
on the National Assembly which left its speaker Karen Demirchian,
then Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisian and six other officials dead.
"If you elect Serzh Sarkisian on February 19, you will elect Nairi
Hunanian," Ter-Petrosian declared, referring to the jailed leader
of gunmen who sprayed the assembly with bullets. "He who elects
Serzh Sarkisian would [thereby] desecrate the holy graves of Karen
Demirchian and Vazgen Sarkisian," he said.