Dashnaktsutiun Responds

With speculation that the former first president, Levon Ter Petrosian, might enter the fray for next year’s election, his bitter foes, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutiun (ARF-D) have responded to Friday’s speech given on the occasion of the 16th anniversary of Armenia’s independence. As has been mentioned on this blog before, although Ter Petrosian’s criticism of the current system might strike a note with much of the population, critics argue that today’s problems first materialized during his tenure as president. RFE/RL has more.

Reacting to the speech, Vahan Hovannisian, a Dashnaktsutyun leader and deputy parliament speaker, said Ter-Petrosian has no moral right to make such accusations because his eight-year rule was also marked by fraudulent elections, human rights abuses and other serious shortcomings.

“He spoke as if the population has already forgotten Levon Ter-Petrosian’s days in power — political repressions, the severe economic crisis that must not be linked with the war [with Azerbaijan,] and the terrible atmosphere that led to a massive emigration,” Hovannisian told RFE/RL.

“There are definitely vicious phenomena existing in the country now, and Dashnaktsutyun has always been the first to talk about them without hysteria characteristic of some opposition circles,” he said. “We are conscious at the same time that the roots of those problems date back to Levon Ter-Petrosian’s rule.”

Dashnaktsutyun, which is a junior partner in the ruling coalition, was in strong opposition to Ter-Petrosian and his Armenian Pan-National Movement (HHSh) throughout his presidency, which began in 1991 and ended in 1998. The nationalist party was controversially banned in 1994 for allegedly violating Armenian law and operating a secret death squad. The ban also led to the forcible closure of newspapers controlled by Dashnaktsutyun.

As the RFE/RL report explains, the ARF-D has some significant reasons for disliking Ter Petrosian given that the party was banned during his regime. Some, but not all, of those ARF-D members imprisoned were only released when the current president, Robert Kocharian, came to power after being instrumental in the former president’s removal from office. Nevertheless, as reported earlier, the ARF-D still welcomes Ter Petrosian’s possible return if only because ideology might once again be injected into Armenian politics.

Hovannisian was among senior party figures who were arrested in 1995 and subsequently handed long prison sentences on charges of plotting a coup d’etat. All of them were set free following Ter-Petrosian’s 1998 resignation engineered by his key ministers, including then Prime Minister Kocharian and Interior Minister Serzh Sarkisian.

While reaffirming Dashnaktsutyun’s highly negative attitude towards Ter-Petrosian, Hovannisian said he and his party would welcome the ex-president’s participation in the forthcoming presidential elections as it would add “an ideological element” to the race.

“It wouldn’t be bad if he nominated his candidacy because the HHSh and Dashnaktsutyun poles will be very visible. It would be interesting to see how others will position themselves in between those poles,” he said.

Still, Hovannisian predicted Ter-Petrosian will decided not to run for president, saying that the latter realizes that his chances of winning the vote are slim. “He is a very self-admiring man and doesn’t like losing,” claimed the vice-speaker.

Ter-Petrosian said on Friday that he has still not decided whether or not to enter the fray.

Meanwhile, RFE/RL’s Press Review says that it is by no means certain that Ter Petrosian will run, but the conversation around the speculation continues.

Like other Armenian newspapers, “Hayastani Hanrapetutyun” covers former President Levon Ter-Petrosian’s first public speech in nearly a decade. “It became obvious from his words that he sees ways of solving the issues of elimination of corruption, systemic reforms, strengthening of democracy and freedom but does not know how to solve the Karabakh problem,” comments the paper. “In essence, Levon Ter-Petrosian’s speech was a bid to return to active politics ahead of the presidential elections of 2008, even if he said that he has not yet made a decision.” The government paper also notes that no Yerevan-based Western ambassador was present at the event organized by the former ruling Armenian Pan-National Movement (HHSh).

Well, some diplomatic representatives were there in the form of at least one honorary consul and a representative from the European Union, but one thing’s for certain. Regardless of whether Ter Petrosian runs or not, things have become unusually interesting in the run up to the presidential election. For once, there might actually get the opportunity to discuss and debate the situation in Armenia although it looks more likely that black propaganda methods will be employed first. Some might instead argue that it is this type of critical analysis which Ter Petrosian deserves.

However, Nazarian doesn’t agree, and comments on a piece that state-controlled Public TV aired in the days following Ter Petrosian’s Friday speech.

In this piece they accuse LTP of allowing corruption become even worse, political assassinations, economic misdeeds, etc. Obviously, they did not forget to sing the old tired song about the cold and dark years either. It’s a powerful piece indeed; Goebbels would be proud of it.

But when you try to analyze the situation a little, you realize that this piece tells a lot more about the misdeeds of the current regime than LTP. Corruption now is much worse than during the LTP years as the amount of bribes has grown together with the number of areas where you need to grease palms to get business done.

The biggest political assassination occurred on Serzh Sargsian’s watch when the PM and Speaker of Parliament, together with ministers and MP-s, were murdered. Add to that a number of officials killed such as the Prosecutor General a few years ago and people who were officials during the HHSh rule (Artsrun Margarian, et.al.).

The polarization of the economy in the hands of a few people again occurred during the Kocharian/Sargsian years.

I am still undecided about the condition of democracy during LTP vs. the current administration. LTP banned the Dashnak Party in 1994. The Kocharian regime allowed it back into business but has been suppressing any dissent with carrots like government posts or sticks such as jailing and/or beating the crap out of the oppositionists.

Nazarian nevertheless posts the video, and at least we’re now starting to analyze and compare. For example, there’s an interesting analysis on LTP’s possible return by RFE/RL which also looks at the main reason for his removal from office after an internal coup led by key ministers including the current president, Robert Kocharian. Interestingly, Liz Fuller suggests that everything might not be as it seemed at the time and in fact, since.

In his address on September 21, Ter-Petrossian described as the “greatest crime” committed by Kocharian and Sarkisian their failure to agree to a solution to the Karabakh conflict. In the fall of 1997, Ter-Petrossian published a seminal article entitled “War And Peace: Time For Serious Thought,” in which he argued that resolving the Karabakh conflict rather than preserving the status quo was in the interests of both Armenia and the unrecognized republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (NKR), in order to remove obstacles to economic development and unspecified “problems” in Armenia’s relations with other countries; that the conflict should be resolved peacefully, rather than militarily; and that the eventual settlement should constitute a compromise in which neither side would emerge as either the winner or the loser.

Ter-Petrossian stressed that “compromise is not a choice between the good and the bad, but rather between the bad and the [even] worse.” And he went on to warn that “The opposition should not mislead the people by arguing that there is an alternative to compromise; the alternative to compromise is war.”

[…]

It has long been accepted as “conventional wisdom” that Ter-Petrossian’s endorsement of the September 1997 phased peace plan was the primary, if not the sole reason why several of his ministers, including Kocharian and Sarkisian — then premier and interior minister, respectively — launched the campaign that culminated in his forced resignation in February 1998. But as Ter-Petrossian’s former adviser Gerard Libaridian points out in his book, “The Challenges of Statehood,” Ter-Petrossian had argued earlier in favor of a compromise solution to the conflict, and the ministers in question had not previously taken issue with that argument. Libaridian also affirmed that the disagreement between Ter-Petrossian and the triumvirate that sought to oust him did not center on the relative merits of the “phased” vs. the “package” approaches to resolving the conflict.

Anyway, the full analysis is here.

Levon Ter Petrosian, HHSh Independence Day Reception, Marriott Armenia, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007