PAP DISINTEGRATION REINFORCED POLITICAL MONOPOLY, KOCHARYAN SAYS

April 8, 2015 12:00

Former President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan

Photo:

Yerevan /Mediamax/. Former President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan
keeps insisting that “Armenia’s current problems have nothing to do
with the Constitution, and moreover, with the state governance system”.

He said this in his interview to 2rd.am website.

“One can fail or manage to govern a country both from the cabinets
of a President and Prime Minister. There are good and bad examples
of functioning of presidential and parliamentary models in the world.

However, functioning of a well-established internal party system with
effective democracy, factionalism, internal party fight resulting
in renovation of the party leadership and strategies is a mandatory
condition for a successful parliamentary country. Do you know any such
parties in Armenia? Unfortunately, even the level of political debates
in our country is offensively primitive”, said Robert Kocharyan.

“It’s naive to suppose that the parliamentary model will automatically
lead to democratic and competitive party environment. It will more
likely reinforce the phenomenon of patronage which is speeding up
and is one of the misfortunes of Armenia”, he added.

Commenting the developments around Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP),
Robert Kocharyan said:

“I was on good terms with Gagik Tsarukyan but there was no shadow
political agreements on the future formats of cooperation with the
party and its leader. There were many statements on this matter both
by Prosperous Armenia representatives and by my office. And it’s not
our fault that not everyone believed in their sincerity. The PAP had
its political team which energetically advanced the party’s interests.

Over the past years, the PAP has demostrated a keen aspiration to take
part in parliamentary and presidential elections. It’s also obvious
that I couldn’t cooperate with the format of non-governmental three
forces established a few months ago for very clear reasons. And after
all, there wouldn’t be such a format if the PAP served my interests”.

The second President of Armenia said that “the PAP disintegration, of
course, made life easier for the authorities. However, it reinforced
the political monopoly in the country either leaving the problems
unchanged or even aggravating the remaining problems”.