TWO WAYS FOR THE COUNTRY’S DEVELOPMENT
Gevorg Haroutyunyan
Hayots Ashkhar
Published on March 11, 2008
Interview with SHAVARSH KOCHARYAN, Head of the National Democratic
Party
"Mr. Kocharyan, to what extent is the number of votes obtained by
the candidates as a result of the elections regular or unexpected,
and what are the political causes?"
"The ex-President received quite a large number of votes, and the fact
itself is illogical. Estimating his political activity, we can say
that during the whole pre-election stage this particular candidate
was promising to fight all the unlawful phenomena unacceptable to
the people, whereas he himself was the author of all that. I don’t
rule out the possibility that the votes he obtained result not only
from the assessment of his political activity but also from the use
of certain political technologies and psychological impact.
To properly understand what happened, it is worth remembering the
phenomenon of Arkadi Vardanyan’s. He was a citizen of the Russian
Federation who could have quite restricted ambitions, and he appeared
in our internal political life from some unknown place. But in a
short period of time, he managed to gather tens and thousands of
people and organize a protest rally.
In this case, it is difficult to speak about special technologies,
powerful financial and foreign intervention. None of these factors
can be ruled out as far as the former President is concerned, but
the general idea is that the overwhelming majority of our people do
not want to live in such conditions.
The people want to live in Armenia. They are dissatisfied and do not
tolerate shadow corrupt practices and impunity. They want to live in
a fair country and be protected."
"But as a matter of fact, the candidate you mention wanted to establish
a ‘one-man power’ and not build a ‘new Armenia’."
"This is also the result of another syndrome existing in our society.
There is a belief among the people that elections are not a way
of solving such problems. Leaning on their negative experience, the
voters just try to decide which candidate has chances to come to power,
instead of considering the given candidate’s program and the existing
situation. The other circumstances are pushed to the background,
and the factor of rebelling against the state becomes a primary task.
This was the ace used by the ex-President who, with the help of certain
technologies, simply instilled false thoughts into the people, saying
that he received support by the Army, the Police, the intelligence
services and the civil servants. There were some officials who later
confirmed such false information in their statements. Under the
influence of various impulses, his listeners obliterated from their
memories their ideas about the former President. The belief that he
couldn’t carry out the promised changes because he himself was the
author was being neutralized.
Unfortunately, this enabled him to become the leader of the protesting
electorate and gather under his banner the dissatisfied mass of people
from all the strata of society. But what happened cannot be considered
as peaceful rallies because among the people who gathered under
his banner there were also slaughterers, plunderers and ‘Yerkrapah’
members who never participated in the Artsakh war."
"Nonetheless, our society is somehow split apart. How is it possible
to overcome such internal challenge?"
"Both our society and country can no longer be the same as they were
before the elections. There are two possible ways of development. It
is possible to continue strengthening the system of one-man power
and thus, continue the activity initiated by the former President.
The alternative is the further strengthening of the all the state
institutions in order to prevent such disorders from happening any
more and move towards democracy. It requires large-scale system
reforms. This should now be the primary task of the state. And if
the system of one-man power continues to strengthen, the number of
dissatisfied people will increase.
Power in Armenia will turn out to be sitting on a mine that may go
off at any moment. But in conditions of accomplishing society, the
dissatisfied people will gradually decrease in number.
After the rough clashes that took place on March 1, slow steps are
already dangerous. The state must be able to overcome the existing
challenge, and this may lead to the formation of the upcoming
strategy."