WHY DO THEY NOT TRUST SARGSYAN?
James Hakobyan
Lragir.am
16/12/09
The numbers released by the Russian centre of public opinion study,
in accordance with which only three percent of the Russian citizens
trust Serge Sargsyan was obviously left out of the attention of the
governmental propaganda machine. But doubtlessly, this survey could not
be overlooked by the government because it was a transparent hint at
the foreign policy led by Serge Sargsyan which started to make Russia
nervous. The three percent of trust towards Serge Sargsyan is the
expression of the very nervousness and a second opinion cannot be here.
But does it regard only the foreign policy? Or maybe everything is much
deeper. Overall, Serge Sargsyan does not seem to have made anti-Russian
steps. Moreover, if Russians wanted, he refused participating in the
NATO Georgian military exercises at the very last moment and joined
immediately the CSTO fast response forces, allocated the right to the
construction of a new power plant in Armenia to Russia. So, which is
the reason why Russia does not trust Serge Sargsyan?
But before trying to think about the answer to this question, another
answer is worth being thought about first: which Russia does not trust
Serge Sargsyan. Let it not seem an exaggeration but today there are
two Russias- the one of Dmitri Medvedev and the one of Vladimir Putin.
And these Russias seem to be in an apparent war and there are already
victims – terror actions and murders in the North Caucasus, continuous
assassinations of enterprisers in Moscow, fire in a night club of
Perm. Russia has long been in a permanent process of assassinations,
accidents and terrorism which was considered an overcome period with
the help of Putin’s rough policy and strong fist. No one knows the
reason why terrorist actions again became regular in the countries
of the North Caucuses, there have even been ordered murders in the
centre of Moscow, terrorism was transported from North Caucasus to
Russian central cities.
How this can be called if not a war? Of course, no one declared a war,
neither Putin nor Medvedev did. But, doubtlessly, the question why
in case Putin had stopped what again rose up after several months of
Medvedev’s tenure will occur to an ordinary Russian citizen. And this
ordinary Russian citizen will find the logic answer: Putin managed to
solve those issues while Medvedev fails. And since the point is about
life and death, this ordinary citizen will start dreaming about the
restoration of Putin’s complete power.
Such is the Russian logic. This is the current Russian atmosphere.
Consequently, in order to understand the reason why Serge Sargsyan
enjoys only 3 percent of the trust of the "Russian residents", we
need perhaps to understand which "Russian residents" they are. From
this point, the situation is very interesting. The attitude of the
Putin’s wing of the Russian power was seen at the two congresses of
the Armenian Republican and Russian Yedinaya Rossia parties. The
point is that Yedinaya Rossia which Putin heads invited to its
congress delegates from both the Republican Party and the Bargavach
Hayastan party. But no one knows why, the Republican presented to
that congress at a very low level – the parliamentary members Gagik
Melikyan and Bardan Ayvazyan presented it who do not have even a post
in the RA executive body. Instead, Gagik Tsarukyan represented his
party in Moscow.
The "response" of the Yedinaya Rossia was not noteworthy as well. The
vice speaker of the Russian State Duma Artur Chilingarov represented
Yedinaya Rossia party at the RP congress. Chilingarov in Russia is
a person who does not exist in politics. Besides, Chilingarov is an
Armenian, in other words, sending Chilingarov to the RP congress,
Yedinaya Rossia hinted that the point is only about a "gathering of
Armenians". Besides, not the leader of the Yedinaya Rossia Vladimir
Putin but Boris Grizlov conveyed greetings to the RP congress. Let
us agree that this is not so natural for the relations between two
leading parties of two strategical partner countries.
But at the same time, the attitude of Medvedev’s wing to Serge
Sargsyan is almost unknown and unclear. If Putin has underscored
his cold behavior to the Armenian leadership on several occasions
not having visited Armenia after assuming the office of the prime
minister for about two years, so Medvedev has never given emphasis
on his dissatisfaction at the same time not showing his support to
Serge Sargsyan.
Both wings of the Russian government are not ruled out to have the same
opinion in trusting Serge Sargsyan. In other words, both of them think
Serge Sargsyan’s policy does not stem from the Russian interests and
trusting him becomes dangerous. This means that Serge Sargsyan will
be find himself in difficulties when trying to overcome this problem
using the Russian inner-governmental evident disagreements because
there seem to be no disagreement related to himself personally. The
Russian governmental wings are possible to have disagreements in
connection with the future which keeps Russia back from making its
dissatisfaction practical and tangible.