PERHAPS IT IS FIRST PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE TO WEST
Lragir, Armenia
Oct 2 2007
The leader of the Christian Democratic Party Khosrov Harutiunyan
stated on October 2 at the Hayatsk club the ex-president’s address on
September 21 was rather a message to the west. Khosrov Harutiunyan
thinks Levon Ter-Petrosyan is thereby trying to offset the lack of
resource for running in the presidential election. Khosrov Harutiunyan
means the lack of the public and political resource of the first
president.
"At the moment Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s political resource is meager.
His public resource is as meager. And by the way, it is objective. If
you walk about the city, meet citizens, many think if Ter-Petrosyan
were to speak up, he should have first of all said why he stumbled
many years ago to continue, which he failed to do. By the way,
we should be frank that usually expectations from the strong, the
major, the powerful are greater. The first president of Armenia has
his peculiar role in the history of independent Armenia with its
achievements, victories and also failures. And if today the attitude
of the society is meant, I assure you that many were waiting for
Ter-Petrosyan’s self-criticism, if I may say so, whether he took
his time to assess for himself what he succeeded and what he failed,
and whether the reasons were objective or subjective. Unfortunately,
the society has heard nothing so far," Khosrov Harutiunyan says.
He says it reduces Ter-Petrosyan’s resource, which he is trying to
offset with a message to the foreign organizations. "I may be mistaken
but it is a supposition which I can make," Khosrov Harutiunyan says. He
says it is not accidental that the first president’s speech was
based on the two problems which Armenia committed to solve before the
international organizations: the settlement of the Karabakh conflict
and battle against corruption. In addition, Khosrov Harutiunyan says
corruption, misconduct existed in the early 90s as well. Khosrov
Harutiunyan says the society’s current disappointment also stems from
the years of government of the All-Armenian Movement. "Many yielded
to the temptation of power. We witnessed a state inside the state,
the domineering role of the person, use of public administration
for their own, including non-political purposes. In other words,
corruption, protectionism, defiance of the law, is not the epidemic
of the past 5 or 6 years," Khosrov Harutiunyan says.
He says it allows thinking that Ter-Petrosyan hopes to get the support
of the international organizations to boost his resource.
However, Khosrov Harutiunyan discerns other reasons for concern. He
says since Ter-Petrosyan’s speech sparked passions rather than made
think, there is concern that the benchmark of the political struggle
in Armenia may drop low, and a confrontation may occur like in the
presidential election in 1996. Khosrov Harutiunyan says expectations
from the West may create conditions for a revolution in Armenia which
Armenia does not need.