Deja Vu

With the former president Levon Ter Petrosian increasingly looking likely as the main opposition candidate to stand against the prime minister, Serzh Sarkisian, in next year’s presidential election in Armenia, various media outlets are already reporting that the persecution of his supporters has already started.

The case against the Gyumri-based GALA TV is already well-known, but there are other examples too. Armenia Now, for example, reports on the increased interest by the tax authorities in the economic activities of businessman Khachatur Sukiasian (formerly known in “better days” as Grzo).

The further developments interesting to the public continued in early November, when inspection started at the Bjni mineral water plant belonging to MP Khachatur Sukiasyan as well as at other companies belonging to the Sukiasyan family.

The checkups, nonetheless, were not so unexpected. The news about possible inspections and even arrests at “Sil Concern” were speculated upon already in late September when one of Armenia’s most successful businessmen, the founding director of “Sil Concern”, Sukiasyan, stood beside Ter-Petrosyan, not concealing his political preference.

“I will always be by Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s side,” Sukiasyan told media. Indeed, the tycoon was in the front line on October 26 during the largest opposition rally of recent years. “I am prepared for persecutions. When your choice is ideological, when you are certain that your choice is right, then you are ready. I will take any pressure, any persecution with pleasure.”

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, it’s ironic to see Sukiasian made out to be some kind of “clean” and “heroic” or “principled” businessman in Armenia. In the late 1990s, for example, his name was synonymous with being at the top of a corrupt and connected pile of semi-oligarchal figures who made most of their money under Ter Petrosian. Here’s what one analyst wrote in 1998.

The second branch of this type is represented by Grzo (a new multimillionaire, the richest man in Armenia, who just fled to Los Angeles) and Telman Ter-Petrossian (brother of LTP, an industrialist and businessman who strongly advocated developing trade relations with Turkey and died in May 1997). They do not care about such categories as national mission, history, or destiny. They want to do business and get rich, and as a side-result of their personal success, to bring pizzerias and other signs of ‘haute couture’, as they understand it, to Armenia. They are apolitical as much as possible, except that they needed strong political support from LTP et al. for their enterprises to succeed, and mostly were relations of one or another among the ruling political elite.

Even in the first few years under Kocharian, Grzo did well apparently after receiving assurances that he wouldn’t be touched for tax evasion, and news reports that he avoided declaring his income, just as those who took his place continue to do today, appear to bear that out. There was no “Dodi Gago” back then, there was only “Grzo.” This from 2003, for example, before he fell from grace with the ruling regime.

[…] the content of the income declarations led many local observers to dismiss the whole undertaking as a farce. Kocharian claimed to live on about $500 a month, less than the declared monthly income of his 21-year-old son. […]

Even wealthy businessmen holding seats in Parliament posted modest revenues. For example, Khachatur Sukiasian, one of Armenia’s richest men, claimed to have earned only about $40,000 in 2001. Sukiasian, who has a collection of luxury limousines, also claimed to own no cars at all.

Times change, of course, and this is what some are concerned about. Recently, bloggers such as Kronstadt at the Armenian Libertarian-Socialist Movement wondered whether things would change if Levon Ter Petrosian came to power. Just as the names of the corrupt or political and economic elite changed when Kocharian came tio power, perhaps the same would happen if Ter Petrosian were to return.

If LTP is elected won’t he overthrow the Kocharian Clan only to replace it with his own LTP Clan? Won’t he go hunting down all the businesses that have established their comfortable little profitable enterprises under the protective wings of Kocharian, Bargavach and HHK, only to replace those with petty enterprises under his own Cln? Yes, that’s quite a possibility.

To illustrate this point still further, it’s again worth examining the criticisms made of the present authorities by Ter Petrosian in his 26 October speech. As has been raised by many in Armenia, the same things Ter Petrosian accuses Kocharian of were also part and parcel of his time in power. Vahan Ishkhanyan’s excellent article in today’s Armenia Now really illustrates this perfectly.

Among many other accusations in his 90-minute speech on October 26, Levon Ter-Petrosyan accused the authorities of: “gathering so-called compromising information and making special dossiers against all active citizens including many now standing on this square”.

I wasn’t among those standing in that square, but I understand what he was talking about. I am a man with a “dossier”. Mine, though, is not new. It was created against me during the presidency of Levon Ter-Petrosyan.

In 1997 I tried to open a Non Governmental Organization. I was refused, I learned, because the National Security Service (KGB) had branded me “an undesired person” due to articles I’d written that were in opposition to the Ter-Petrosyan regime.

In those times, working in an oppositional newspaper was dangerous. Colleagues of mine were beaten and newspaper offices were targets for being vandalized by authorities. I lived in a building with a dark entrance and often entered with fear of who might be waiting to attack me there.

[…]

During those tense days of 1996 I learned that I was wanted by police; that my name was among those on a list at the airport where I would be detained if I tried to leave the country.

I changed two apartments, to have my trace lost. The police had gone to ransack my place; my mother had called the neighbors from the window to come stop the search. The neighbors had fled the home.

[…]

I had escaped, but hundreds had been caught. Like me, they also have their memories of the last time Levon Ter-Petrosyan was in charge. Deputy Davit Vardanyan was beaten with his legs and arms tied. Among those doing the beating was Mushegh Saghatelyan, who, Ter-Petrosyan stated in his speech, is persecuted by the authorities. It’s true, Saghatelyan was fired, tried and jailed.

[…]

Elections? Democracy? Change in power? The question was closed in 1995-96.

I had forgotten the past, I was interested in tomorrow. I am a journalist. I wish for a press that is free from control of political forces and where my colleagues and I can earn a proper living. I was thinking of the platforms that would dismantle the regime and set democracy so that every person gets freedom from such things as “dossiers”.

The return of Ter-Petrosyan is seen as offering an alternative.

Serzh or Levon? I have no choice. I think of a different thing now: Spare us from the return of the past.

Meanwhile, RFE/RL reports that the authorities might now be gunning for Ter Petrosian. After sending out tanks and soldiers onto the streets of Yerevan in 1996 and closing down newspapers, banning political parties and allowing high-profile assassinations to continue under his rule, it’s somewhat ironic. Others simply consider that by not admitting the errors of his tenure, Ter Petrosian is showing breathtaking arrogance.

Vahan Ishkhanian’s piece is here.