TER-PETROSIAN, ALLIES DISCUSS NEXT STEPS
Radio Liberty
March 17 2008
Czech Republic
Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian and his opposition allies
remaining at large have met to discuss their further steps, saying
that they will continue to strive for regime change in Armenia by
"legal and democratic means."
Ter-Petrosian’s office said participants of the weekend meeting,
apparently the first since the violent post-election unrest in Yerevan,
"reaffirmed their determination to fight against the kleptocratic
system."
"All leaders of the [pro-Ter-Petrosian opposition] parties noted
that the public is determined to get rid of the current authorities
by legal and democratic means," it said in a short statement. No
further details were reported.
Ter-Petrosian said last week that he will continue to challenge the
official results of Armenia’s disputed presidential election and plans
to resume demonstrations in the capital after the lifting of the state
of emergency expected. His representatives had already notified the
Yerevan mayor’s office of their intention to hold a rally on March 21,
the day after the anticipated end of emergency rule.
However, municipal authorities banned the planned gathering, saying
that it would pose a "serious threat to the life and health of
citizens." In a written statement, an aide to Mayor Yervand Zakharian
also argued that the last opposition rally held on March 1 was marred
by deadly clashes between Ter-Petrosian supporters and riot police.
More than one hundred opposition leaders and activists have been
arrested on charges mainly stemming from those clashes which the
Armenian authorities call a coup attempt. Dozens of others have
gone into hiding. Many of the detained and fugitive oppositionists
are senior members of opposition parties supporting Ter-Petrosian,
notably the Armenian Pan-National Movement (HHSh) and Hanrapetutyun
(Republic). According to Ter-Petrosian’s office, most members of the
two parties’ governing boards are now in jail or on the run.
An office spokesman, Armen Khachatrian, told RFE/RL on Monday that
dozens of other, less known, opposition activists in Yerevan and
other parts of the country have been taken to police stations in
recent days. He said police officers are trying to force them to give
incriminating testimony against opposition leaders and to promise
not to participate in further Ter-Petrosian rallies. He said the
interrogations are illegal because none of the activists received
written summonses from the police and other law-enforcement agencies.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian and his ally Artur
Baghdasarian, who finished third in the February 19 election,
on Monday again defended the use of force against Ter-Petrosian
supporters 1 and blamed the former president for the resulting
casualties. "He radicalized a part of the opposition and guided it
into a standoff with the state, which led to the March 1 riots in
which armed demonstrators confronted police," they said in a joint
article published by "The Washington Post."
"Despite recent events, our country is still moving forward," wrote
Sarkisian and Baghdasarian. "The international community has everything
to gain through supporting a stable, transparent and elected government
in Armenia."
However, the Zharangutyun party of Raffi Hovannisian, the only
opposition group represented in Armenia’s parliament, had a completely
different take on the post-election situation in the country, saying
that "the schism between the Armenian people and its government
continues to expand." In a statement, Zharangutyun, which endorsed
Ter-Petrosian’s presidential bid, said that the presidential ballot
was fraudulent and that Armenians had a legitimate right to dispute
its official results in the streets. It said the March 1 bloodshed
resulted from the break-up of non-stop protests in Yerevan’s Liberty
Square staged by the Ter-Petrosian camp.
"The unconscionability displayed on February 19 and the brutality
used to protect it on March 1 remain unresolved issues," said
the statement. "No state of emergency, accompanied as it is by an
aggressive, one-sided ‘public information’ vertical which deepens
the public divide rather than healing it, will succeed in securing
the collective amnesia of state and society."