LEVON TER-PETROSIAN WOULD NEVER AGAIN GAIN SO MANY VOTES IF WE HAD PROPER POLITICAL SYSTEM
By Rouzan Poghosian

AZG Armenian Daily
26/02/2008

Post-election

The phenomenon that a person who had left the political field for
already ten years woke up one morning and managed to take the second
place after having run in the presidential elections testifies to
the fact that "our society is pregnant with opposition," Aleksander
Iskandarian, political expert said at "Hayeli" press club. And our
society will remain in this state of mind unless a proper political
system is created in the country. The recent elections are peculiar
first of all because of Levon Ter-Petrosian’s appearance. His
unexpected appearance imparted the home political situation with
strong dynamics. The All Armenian Movement would hardly ever get
so many votes, if they participated in the elections as a separate
political force. "It’s not his personality or the political force
he represents that we deal with. In few months he managed to gather
around himself the people who were deeply disappointed with the
current authorities and achieve astonishing results by the end of
the elections," Iskandarian said. By the way, before the elections,
Iskandarian forecasted that the main competition in the elections
will be unfolded between Serge Sargian and Levon Ter-Petrosian,
while the rest of the candidates will play no essential part.

Stepan Safarian, member of "Heritage" party also dwelt on the
electoral and post-electoral developments. He added that Armenia
lacks not only a political system, but also an electoral one. He
agreed with Iskandarian about the thought that the success of an
occasional person in the elections is conditioned by the lack of
the political system in Armenia. "I think that the current events
in Yerevan are of certain risk, as the elections held by means of
goast voting is a resource of risk itself," Safarian said. He said
that the evaluations of the international observers are not definite
and do not reflect the real situation. The political experts gave
no reply to the question how long will people continue dancing and
singing at the Freedom Square. Safarian said that a part of the people
in the square are quite decisive and have no intention to quit their
positions. In response to our comment that Levon Ter-Petrosian and his
team stage the scenario of the 1988, but as compared with that year,
today they have no other goal than to seize the power, and they are
going to deceive the people they lead already tomorrow, Safarian agreed
that in 1988 people were united by the idea of Armenia’s and Artsakh’s
independence, but added that he believes that today the people will not
be deceived. (But the people are already being deceived, aren’t they?)

Suffering from the nostalgia of power, the All Armenian Movement
struggles with the scenario of 1988, by means of installing tents
in the square, organizing rallies, demonstrations, processions,
sitting strikes.

Probably, today someone ready to go on hunger strike will appear in
the stage and put forward the demand to shut down the Metsamor NPP
and "Nairit." They still haven’t called for people to go on working
strike, and will never do, as all of the factories and institutions
were closed when the All Armenian Movement came to power.

May there be no war in Artsakh, as none of them will go to fight in
the first lines of the battles. We, the students to went on a strike
in 1988, will not forget how "the poet of the century" Vano Siradehian
would shout in the Theatre Square that they would be the first to join
the fighting detachments, if a war unfolded in Artsakh. But, instead…