ARMENIAN PRESIDENT FACES TOUGH CHOICE BETWEEN POLITICAL SUICIDE AND CONCRETE CONCESSIONS
Today
March 31 2010
Azerbaijan
"Political language is necessary to make a lie sound true, to make
killing look respectable and to grab the air with one’s own hands."
This aphorism by English writer and essayist George Orwell has
apparently become very relevant in the Armenian political beau monde.
The fact that talks about Armenian ex-President Robert Kocharian’s
political comeback top media reports is case and point.
Inexhaustible theme
Armenia’s socioeconomic situation is simply catastrophic with a
tendency to deteriorate further.
The decline of the Armenian economy was over 30 percent at the
dollar calculation this year. Naturally, all this will lead to a
further rise in prices on all types of goods, a devaluation of the
dram and a dramatic reduction in the already low purchasing power of
the Armenian population.
Practices related to democracy, freedom of speech and thought are
far from the minimum requirements. The oligopoly continues to hold
all the power in the country, which thwarts the attempts of dissents
and threatens its own rule.
And, finally, Armenia’s foreign policy has suffered a crash. And the
most striking proof of this is what the country has achieved from
the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations.
Armenia gained a clear expression of Turkey’s position, which
reiterated that it is impossible to normalize ties with Armenia without
Armenia’s withdrawal from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan,
emphasized the need for an early settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, demonstrated Azerbaijan’s increased
credibility and influence in the region and the world, showed the
distrust toward Armenia as a negotiator and, finally, questioned the
fate of tens of thousands of illegal Armenians working in Turkey
with the further threat of closing air communications between the
two countries.
Further attempts to hide the truth about the Armenian economy are
equal to trying to grab the air with one’s own hands. So, there is
nothing surprising about the renewed talks about Kocharian’s return
to politics. What is the reason behind mainstreaming this idea? There
are several possible scenarios.
Real threat or another farce?
The first scenario is that being aware of all the possible consequences
of the further deterioration of the socioeconomic and political
situation in Armenia, Yerevan is ready to make major concessions
in the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in an interview
with CNN said there has been rapid progress in the process of solving
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It should also be noted that in an
interview with German Die Zeit, Prime Minister Erdogan also said:
"Turkey will not open its border with Armenia until Armenia leaves
Azerbaijan’s territories."
In other words, it seems that Armenia would have to make steps, very
disadvantageous from the viewpoint of the Armenian nationalists,
in the settlement of Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Under these conditions it is quite timely from the viewpoint of
the Armenian nationalists to bring Kocharian’s comeback into the
mainstream. By the way, the former president has already criticized
the current Armenian authorities.
Thus, it seems that Kocharian is being presented to Armenia and the
international community as a club, which could hit President Serzh
Sargsyan over the head when he begins to take concrete steps to
resolve the Armenian -Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Worthy of note is that the leader of the Prosperous Armenia party
and oligarch Gagik Tsarukyan and ex-Foreign Minister, Sivilitas
Foundation Chairman Vartan Oskanian made similar statements almost
simultaneously with Kocharyan, who condemned the current economic
policy of the Armenian authorities.
These statements voiced by people close to Kocharian discredited
Sargsyan, who is responsible for the poor economic situation in the
country and his failing foreign policy. Recently, Armenian media
reported that Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian wrote a resignation
letter and sent it to the president’s residence.
For his close aides he motivated his resignation by Sargsyan’s
compliant policy on the Karabakh issue. After receiving the minister’s
resignation, Sargsyan summoned Ohanian and had an almost six-hour
conversation with him. Then Ohanian withdrew his resignation and
returned to work.
All this shows that the current Armenian president is actually being
forced to make major concessions in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,
and Ohanian is ready to support the forces opposed to the Armenian
president once this happens. And this is very serious. Given
Tsarukian’s and Ohanian’s opportunities, there are strong reasons
to predict even more pressure on Sargsyan due to the speculation
about Kocharian’s return to power. Moreover, the history of the
Sargsyan-Kocharian standoff has lasted more than a year.
In particular, Sargsyan defeated Kocharian once in the last
parliamentary elections. Back then, Prosperous Armenia, hastily set up
by Kocharian, was crushed and had no option but to become a younger
and less meaningful partner for the dominating Republicans. Later,
the bloody March events ensued and became a symbol of Sargsyan’s
presidency. The whole world saw the scale of the fraud and bloody
suppression of dissent in Armenia. It was Kocharian’s response to
the current president who cannot escape the stigma of a dictator and
a politician who came to power by spilling the blood of his own people.
Will there be a new bloodshed in Armenia? Kocharian has repeatedly
showed that he can resort to the bloodletting of his own people for
the sake of quenching his own political ambitions. So, it all depends
on what Sargsyan’s next actions will be.
Bloodshed in Armenia is not beneficial for Azerbaijan at all since any
destabilization of the situation in the country is fraught curtailing
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict negotiation process, in which the current
Armenian president appears to be ready to make concrete concessions.
Precisely because of this, there is reason to consider a second version
of the events on Kocharian’s return to power. Maybe the bitter rivals
Sargsyan and Kocharyan are staging this farce in a bid to break down
the talks to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
That Sargsyan has run out of formal arguments to delay Armenia’s
response to the updated Madrid principles corroborates this assertion.
At this point, there is the threat of Kocharian’s return to power,
followed by the destabilization of the political situation in Armenia
and his rejection of the normalization of the Armenian-Turkish dialogue
and any real steps to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Of course, Kocharian has every opportunity to personally voice
dissatisfaction with the actions of the current government to Sargsyan
himself and other members of the government, but not through the
media. So, it is possible that this is a game for the foreign audience
for the most part.
Sargsyan is not interested and strongly opposes Kocharian’s return to
power in any form including as prime minister because he understands
that his consent for a Kocharian comeback would be tantamount to
political suicide.
The specifics of the situation in Armenia show that the lives of
ordinary citizens will not improve regardless of whether Kocharian
returns to politics. They will continue to live in the country,
struggle for survival and be consumable in the hands of their own
rulers, regardless of the name and surname of their leader. These
rulers have long established the basic rule of life in the country.
This rule is consonant with another Orwellian maxim, according to
which all animals are equal but some animals are a bit more equal
than others.
A. Hasanov Day.Az writer
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