– Recently Armenia has become very active in the internal political fielde. New parties are established which intend to have a majority in the RA National Assembly after the parliamentary elections. What do you have to say about this?
– The current activeness of the political field is more exaggerated. The sooner we get to the parliamentary elections, the more obvious the inner political and the inner governmental struggle will become. The new and artificially formed parties were established to serve the government. This implies that there is a serious problem inside the government, which caused such changes. And different political sides don’t like the activity of the governmental parties. The governmental parties will never go to elections all together as one team. The new parties are artificial parties established by the resources of the government. And nothing artificial stays too long. We witnessed that during the last NA elections- some oligarchs tried to establish some parties or unions but did not succeed in anything. I think it doesn’t make much difference in what way the financial resources, anticipated for the government are spent. The establishment of fairly new parties states that there is no trust within the government any more.
– Nevertheless, there are rather serious conversations, according to which it is already decided who is going to have a majority in the parliament during the coming parliamentary elections.
– I think the government is totally mistaken by thinking that the parliament seats are already distributed. The government thinks that the words “government” and “state” are synonyms. This is their mistake. The upcoming NA elections are going to be essentially different from the previous elections. One of the reasons is that the presidential elections are going to proceed after the parliamentary elections and there would be a need for reproduction, that is – elect a president. It is obvious that people are not satisfied with the current goverment. The government does not have real social grounds any more. Nothing has recently been done on behalf of the government. The increase of the gas price, the adverse situation of the communications’ system and the sad end of the Armenian-Iranian gas pipeline prove how incapable the current government is and emphasize the vulnerability of our state in terms of security. The government has succeeded in creating confusion in the opposition also. They were able to deviously spoil different statesmen who they felt the society trusted. The government won’t be able to do this any more because everybody witnessed who is backing who.
– So do you think there will be changes of positions in the opposition as well?
– I think the parties functioning in the opposition don’t have to worry about the changes inside the opposition. I mean the real opposition. Moreover, those changes and replacements would even be useful to eliminate the current confusion. I suppose there will be a number of opposition representatives, who would like to resign or leave the opposition. Of course in my opinion their resignation wouldn’t be positive on their behalf and I especially mean those representatives, who move from one party to another.
During both presidential and parliamentary elections there was no good political competition. Of course the society followed the opposition for one reason – to get rid of the authorities. But perhaps they wouldn’t like to see the given political team in power. Only when the opposition formulates its issues in a way to make the alternative political team more visible to the society and to take the country out of the crisis it would be possible to prevent the oligarchs and minor governors from altering Armenia on their own behalf. Under these circumstances the government will not have the chance to do much with its resources and methods.
– Mr. Kokobelyan, in that case, why doesn’t the ANM propose alternative programs and why doesn’t it present itself as a force leading the society?
– The ANM has not had the opportunity to do that so far due to subjective and objective reasons and when in power, it was not quite understandable for the society. I think that right now people realize that the ANM includes leaders that are ready to fight for their ideas and principles and will not surrender. And at present ANM doesn’t have its previous representatives, who humiliated the party. I think that currently there are broad opportunities in our political field for self-expression, functioning and realizing ideas. We will certainly implement our programs and plans. One thing our society is sure of – the ANM is a party, which unites people who faced a lot, overcame the war and never avoided political accountability. We never refused to tell the truth. Time showed that in terms of tactics the ANM has always been right.
– Are you planning to participate in the parliamentary elections of 2007? If yes, will you participate in an alliance or on your own?
– I think it’s too soon to speak about participation. One thing is clear. There are few political forces in Armenia that will be capable of solving the current political issues on their own. One of those is the ANM. The issues that the country faces must be solved not only by the ANM, but by everyone. Therefore, I think we should first join an alliance with the society.