NOT DEFEATED BUT DECEIVED
Gevorg Haroutyunyan

Hayots Ashkhar
March 12, 2008

Interview with EDUARD ANTINYAN, Secretary of the Armenian Liberal
Progressive Party

"Mr. Antinyan, you also indicated in your political predictions
that LTP might anticipate support by a much smaller number of
proponents. How did he manage to deceive 21 percent of the voters?"

"As far as this particular candidate is concerned, the political
predictions were constructed on the principle of reasonableness. It
wasn’t simply considered that having returned to the political arena
and demonstrated ambitions for becoming a President, this person
would totally renounce morality and deceive his supporters from the
first to the last step.

And to keep his electorate in delusion, the slogan ‘I have already
won’ was put into circulation even before the elections. And his
false statement was taken for truth by all those who had constantly
suffered defeat and were ready for any step just for the sake of
being the winner at least this time.

Inventing short-lived lies that were refuted just a day after, he
managed to attract all those who didn’t share his viewpoints. And
here worked the constantly repeated allegation that 90 percent of the
force structures, the Army, ‘Yerkrapah’ members and the state system
supported him. And those who believed the statement hurried to join the
‘winner’. The thing is that society has a significant number of people
who live with pleasant lies and refuse to listen to the harsh truth.

Such cheap bluffing by the candidate produced a certain result in this
particular atmosphere. On the other hand, the people who were more or
less conscious did not imagine that the country’s former President
could be such a great liar. There is currently a huge number of
deceived people, and the principal present is to show them the truth."

"This thick crowd of society was artificially separated from the
people when the candidate declared a struggle against the authorities,
considering them Mongol-Tatars" and the "Vikings of Artsakh". With
his attempts to represent the authorities as aliens, he proved that
he himself was alienated from the people in the course of the past
10 years and had faced obstacle for making a part of the same people
become his tool.

The candidate consistently acted in contradiction to his own theses. A
person considering himself liberal cannot declare the opponents of
his idea as enemies and unleash a "national-liberation struggle"
against them. He considers that a certain part of our people who have
fallen victim to xenophobia are Tatars and sorts the nation based on
the document of origin. The result was that the political struggle
changed into a campaign of lie and aggression.

The voters who believed him felt as though they were in the battle
of Sardarapat or Avarayr, so they could consider any result as
a defeat. The lie is actually that there is no battle of Avarayr;
these are elections when even the contender having 49 percent of votes
should realize that the victory belongs to the candidate favored by
the majority of the people."

"What formula do you suggest for restoring the atmosphere of public
consent?"

"The people can always be dissatisfied with the authorities, but it
is impossible to inflame the people’s dissatisfaction by the Bolshevik
slogan saying, ‘the one who had nothing will have everything’ and make
them become a proletariat and convince them that they have nothing to
lose. Whereas all the provocations are organized due to the Bolshevik
consciousness. Among the people standing next to the candidate in the
square there were individuals who were told that in case of dancing
for two more days, they would become ministers by a presidential decree
and possess the whole property belonging to one of the oligarchs.

And this fairy-tale dream was crumbled by a rubber club. Whereas the
credulous should have hatred not for the rubber club, but rather,
for the ‘president’ who had given false promises and invented the
false ‘fairly-tale.’ It is regrettable that such consciousness does
not exist at all. Those who had believed in the fairy-tale had come
out for their ‘last fight’, the ‘big struggle’ because this was their
only chance for becoming rich.

And the candidate was doing his best to persuade them that the
fairy-tale was real and the one who believed in it would take over the
office of the Chief of Police discharged from duty by a decree. The
increase in the number of people not believing in all the stuff also
led to the increase of lie and aggression.

As to the people who, having believed in the lies of the story-teller,
consider themselves losers, it is necessary to show them that they
are not losers at all. The Police officer who saved his soldiers by
lying on the grenade is the hero of time. His family may take pride
in their father. But what about the families of the other victims
whose death was pointless? Who, if not the man deceiving them into a
‘struggle’ and pursuing a goal to come to power at the cost of others’
blood should be held accountable for their death?

Why, 14 years after the ceasefire, was the rifleman forced to
become a political factor? It was done with the purpose of staining
society’s hands with blood and sowing hostility, intolerance and
hatred artificially.

To return all this to the civilized and regular course of development,
it is necessary to give the floor to those whose speech will be
listened to. It is necessary to have someone who, instead of appearing
with white gloves and preaching morals, has participated in the process
and tried to do something to prevent the efforts of splitting the
people. Only he can give proper advice which, if followed in time,
would have prevented the violence and plunder of March 1, because in
that case, there would have been no deceived people."