Is that naive? Yes, I admit it that it probably is.

People want to see improvement in their lives and better governance. If that happens, LTP’s crying on the sideline becomes irrelevant. If the government fails, then LTP, Heritage, and others who can rally the discontents will gather steam.

But there’s a competition between the forces, that would like to represent opposition in this dialog. It is LTP and Heritage. Heritage is parliamentary opposition, and if Sargsyan will begin dialog with Heritage - LTP will lose everything.

Uzogh, if you’re saying that Ter-Petrossian will lose everything if Heritage become too involved, does it work the other way around too? I mean, Heritage stand to lose all the work they’ve put in to get to where they are as a more mature opposition political force?

Regardless, while I admire the work of Heritage and the way it has acted (although I was disappointed by its decision to eventually back Ter-Petrossian, but understand why it did and at least recognize the democratic nature of how it came to that decision), I am not sure that Heritage can become the “sole voice” of the opposition even if it is the only party in parliament.

At the same time, I also don’t believe that Ter-Petrossian has any right to take on that role either which is why I can only refer to him as the leader of the “radical opposition.” Basically, many, many people who oppose Serge also oppose Levon and certainly didn’t vote for him.

Anyway, I think we are at the stage where what is important now is consensus in society, and I know it’s easier said than done, but I think that partisan politics needs to be put aside. This is about Armenia’s future direction, in my opinion, and not even about who should be president.

On that basis, when we consider the PACE recommendations I consider that the government should be discussing with all political groups, civil society, international structures etc. When it comes to negotiating I don’t consider that Ter-Petrossian represents society or those opposed to Sargsyan although he does admittedly represent a large number of them.

Therefore, I would consider that negotiating with Ter-Petrossian should be about measures necessary to defuse tensions in society, but that the actual mechanisms to do so should involve everyone. Unfortunately, we are in this situation because in its present form, parliament is unable to represent the various parts of society simply because it doesn’t represent them properly.

The question now is who will be that party, who will be engaged in that dialog.

In any case, I wasn’t presenting the argument to lay 100% of the blame on LTP, though applying the western legal practice of the but-for argument seems to have validity in the March 1 case.

So, it’s possible that RFE/RL are purposely trying to make Ter-Petrossian look flexible while the government isn’t (notice, RFE/RL always mentions the release of “political prisoners” as being a CE demand but has so far NOT mentioned that the opposition recognizing the constitutional court ruling is as well).

On the other hand, if Ter-Petrossian did realize that his movement is running out of steam the further the election is in people’s minds, I wouldn’t expect him to do anything other than do something like this i.e. wind things down gradually in order not to lose face.

I would also suppose that the greater the demands, the better your position is in any negotiations.

Placing the blame almost solely on Kocharian and giving Sargsyan more room to be flexible is at least a better situation than before. Let’s just not mention that Ter-Petrossian’s people were precisely making this an issue of Sargsyan and his brother before the election.

Still, that’s politics, I suppose.

For example, what if the 1996 presidential election wasn’t falisifed, what if the 2003 presidential election, or what if the 2007 and 2008 ones weren’t?

Or what if the international community had given a damn about democracy building long ago instead of only when it suits them, or what if civil society did at times other than when the US hands outs grants?

Or what if civil society and the media had remained independent, or what if the police had prevented the overnight tent camps in the first place. Or what if the police hadn’t made a pig’s ear of dispersing the Liberty Square camp on the morning of 1 March.

What if the police were actually trained in crowd control and used tear gas and water cannon instead of moving in on the demonstrators as they did?

There are many reasons for what happened, and while I do believe Ter-Petrossian bears some responsibility, the government also does too. Actually, I consider that civil society, the media, the international community — indeed, all of us — were responsible.

All the problems and all the faults of the government, the opposition, civil society and the media came to a head. I also suspect that we should hope and wait for an independent inquiry that is trusted by all sides before finally concluding why everything happened as it did.

Don’t get me wrong. While I consider that in immediate terms it was the dispersal of the opposition camp on 1 March that sparked the clashes, there are many people to blame for getting us to that point as well. On the other hand, it is clear that the way the 1 March clashes were handled by the police was a mess and a total disaster.

It was a major failing, in fact.

Once again, he gave this 10 page speech the contents of which could have been condensed to 10 lines. Just this once I decided to read the whole speech (on A1+), and reaffirmed my belief that it’s a total waste of time to read those.

Here is an explanation of the argument that I think applies to the events.

The concept of cause and culpability become important here. In the American legal system there are several concepts of cause which are pertinent. One of these is the “but for” argument in determining whether a person created a destructive turn of events and whether he should be made to pay for resultant damages. That is, “but for” a person’s committing a certain action, would a second person or group have experienced injury? If the answer is no, then the person initiating that action is held responsible for any damages to the second person.