WAS IT THE LACK OF COURAGE OR HONESTY?
Armen Tsatouryan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
June 25, 2008
Armenia

The main peculiarity of L. Ter-Petrosyan’s speech delivered during the
June 20 demonstration was that he tried, on the one hand, to restrict
himself to the scope of the new post-electoral developments and on
the other hand, came into unsolvable conflicts with them.

Of course, as a master skilled enough to "extort maximum benefit" from
the electoral and post-electoral developments, the ex-President was
again in his elements on the 20th of June. As usual, he was unsparing
both in his criticism and the assessments and characterizations
deriving thereof.

However, L. Ter-Petrosyan could not have ignored the fact that there
are new authorities formed in Armenia after the elections, and they
have already undertaken certain steps towards relieving the internal
political tension and initiating reforms.

On June 20, Mr. Ter-Petrosyan was simply obliged to swallow the
political assessment of those steps. That’s why, he stated in the final
part of his speech that the opposition, be it in Armenia or any other
part of the world, has "two functions". The first function is to come
to power – something which requires much time, and the second function
is "to press the authorities to make positive steps for their people".

There was an impression that after confirming the above-mentioned
realities, the ex-President would have enough courage to
enumerate the positive steps made by the authorities within the
past 3 months; steps, which he believed, were the aftermath of the
opposition’s pressures. And no matter to what extent such allegation
would correspond to the reality, society might conclude that the
Ter-Petrosyan-led opposition was fulfilling its functions, i.e. it was
using pressure against the authorities, pushing them to positive steps.

And despite the statements saying, "If we do something good, who will
say that we are doing wrong things?", Ter-Petrosyan practically lacked
the courage and perhaps, honesty to be as good as his word.

Judge yourselves: the ex-President believes that the new authorities
of the country have been busy with the reshuffling of the human
resources; and nothing more. In particular, no steps were made towards
establishing tax control over the monopolists, appointing professional,
well-disciplined human resources to the important government posts
and solving other problems.

The following question comes up: if Ter-Petrosyan believes in this
kind of declarative statements, how does he account for the fact that
the custom fees entering the state budget, for instance, increased
twice during the month of May. And isn’t the above-mentioned enough to
insist that there is really a certain tax control over the monopolists?

With regard to the professional and well-disciplined human resources,
there’s the following question: can Mr. Ter-Petrosyan insist that the
new President has not appointed such kind of people as Ministers of
Foreign Affairs and Defense, positions that are of pivotal significance
for the country’s domestic and foreign policy?

Haven’t the electoral and post-electoral developments of the past
months, including the political pressure of the Ter-Petrosyan-led
opposition, produced a certain impact on the new authorities which
are engaged in introducing reforms in certain spheres and appointing
well-disciplined and professional human resources?

Why, apart from ignoring those steps, is Mr. Ter-Petrosyan
trying to cast a dark shadow even on his own investments in those
achievements? Doesn’t this testify to the fact that the ex-President
is persistently continuing to ignore the positive steps of the
authorities, without voicing his protest against them?

Moreover, Ter-Petrosyan not only ignores the positive steps, but also
tries to disseminate distrust towards the officials who are engaged
in initiating the reforms mentioned above. Otherwise he wouldn’t have
remembered about the sale of the gold reserves, a bargain concluded
in the period when Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan was the Chair of
the Central Bank. Does he really think that the CBA Chairman made
that step on his own? And if not, why does he make his accusations
in this particular direction?

The answer is obvious. The ex-President does not have the courage to
make an objective assessment on the economic initiatives undertaken
by T. Sargsyan after assuming the post of Prime Minister, because
these initiatives are much bolder in nature than the theoretical
assumptions of Hrant Bagratyan, the "greatest reformer" of the time.

We believe that instead of revealing the objective reality,
L. Ter-Petrosyan proved the extreme subjectivism of his assessments,
by ignoring the positive developments achieved by the new President
and Government during the past months.

Enumerating the material "functions" of the opposition, L.

Ter-Petrosyan forgets that by virtue of being its leader, he is now
obliged to practice what he preaches. And if he still continues to
pursue only one of the functions, i.e. the function of coming to power,
while forgetting about the other, no less important function of pushing
the authorities to positive steps by pressure and making an objective
assessment on their achievements, he is from now on displaying an
unconscientious attitude towards the obligations he enumerates.