Throughout history or in social life, the value of the work done by leaders of countries doesn’t always correspond to the reality of it all. The leader of a country always remains anonymous as he keeps trying to show his good sides and do good deeds (at least in this time period of history). It gets harder to value the work done by the president because most people don’t understand what’s behind the state and governmental resolutions.
What do we average Armenian citizens know about our current and former presidents? For example, how is the president, let’s say, at home? Is he a jealous husband?-most probably not. Is he a father that cares for his children and spoils them?-we don’t know. He presents himself in front of society as one who is an examiner and someone who doesn’t trust the other, doesn’t smile too often and not always adequately. But we must take into consideration that presidents, who are forced to go along with playing their roles and are always in the center of attention of society for a long time, can’t take the everyday stress and often start to suffer from nervousness from all the information going around. This doesn’t predict that we should bring up the “Property in exchange for Debt” and the Hrazdan electricity station’s 5th energy block transaction amongst all this. Even the fact that Chancellor Bismarck used to break expensive china and think about committing suicide after committing an error in politics is not that consoling. President Kocharyan sure doesn’t break china after making similar transactions. But the truth remains that the key to Armenia’s current foreign (economic) and internal politics is in the hands of one person, a person about whom the people know little about. The people do know that the one thing (which in fact, politicians are not ashamed of) that characterizes Kocharyan and his predecessors is not keeping promises. This means that the president says something, or makes a promise but does the opposite. The best example is both prime ministers of Israel, who continuously propagandize peace and taking on responsibilities, but in reality, they are against both.
Do a country’s foreign relations have to do with the individuality of the president, or is it structured based on mathematical calculations? Leader of the National Democratic Union Vazgen Manukyan has the answer to this:
“A country has natural interests and the development depends on the person’s individual politics. For example, we all knew about Britain’s continental politics-if a country started getting stronger and became a competitor for Great Britain, then Great Britain would join other European countries and go against the given country. No matter who the prime minister of Great Britain was, that politics continued. In other words, that was objective politics.”
V. Manukyan also brings up Saddam Hussein’s example. Hussein attacked Kuwait, but if someone else was the leader of Iraq, he probably wouldn’t lead that kind of politics. There are objective standards for foreign politics and it depends on how the president leads them.
“If Levon Ter-Petrosyan were not to be elected as president back in 1991 and instead Paruyr Hayrikyan was elected, most definitely Armenia’s foreign politics would be different. As to whether or not the supremacies of foreign politics are decided beforehand, that is a different story. Those politics can be successful and it can be a failure depending on how it’s led. If we take, for example, the current situation in Armenia, the president of Armenia has a pretty large diapason for leading different kinds of politics. The present-day president of Armenia doesn’t have that many freedoms because he is facing economic issues, the Karabagh conflict, as well as other unsolved issues.”
As for some of the characteristics of Kocharyan’s personality hurting Armenia’s foreign politics, V. Manukyan pointed out his cleverness.
“Kocharyan is clever when it comes to foreign politics. But being clever is good when the person in front of you doesn’t know you are being clever. But when you try to come to terms with Iran, then “throw it all away”, then try Russia and do the same thing, then America, other countries start to distrust the country, in this case, Armenia. On the other hand, the people don’t trust the president and foreign countries take that into consideration when having contact with Kocharyan.”
According to Manukyan, if Russia declares that it is Armenia’s strategic ally and knows that the Armenian authorities are illegitimate, in that case it starts being partners with the president and not the country. In other words, Russia gives legitimacy to the president and sponsors businesses of one or two oligarchs. In this case, the president’s interests and the country’s interests don’t correspond. But there is no level of society in Armenia that can tell Kocharyan how to behave himself with foreign presidents. The people won’t do that because that could be dangerous. In fact, even the personal weaknesses of our top-deputy officials are dangerous. For example, in a democratic country, if any minister were to go to a casino, he would be in the center of attention of the government because the government wouldn’t want to lose its reputation because of that minister.
“There is no mechanism in Armenia holding the authorities back and that’s dangerous for the country’s security,” says V. Manukyan in closing.
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Alexander Arzumanyan considered our question as “abstract”.
“Perhaps it would be correct to put the question in the following way: if the country had a legitimate president, would it be possible to lead the same kind of politics? There is only one answer-no,” he said.
The legitimate president stands more firmly in the international community and there is less foreign pressure.
“Even if we had a president, who is even more half-literate than Kocharyan but legitimate, he would at least be more free and act accordingly to national interests. Otherwise, if the president doesn’t get to sit in the big chair, his personal security may be endangered. Thus, the illegitimate president is forced to sell the property belonging to the state and the county just to keep power.”
As an example, A. Arzumanyan brought up our neighboring country Georgia.
“Do you actually think that Sahakashvili had gotten permission from Russia or the West beforehand to make reforms?-no. But when he got elected by the people, both Russia and the West went along with that. As long as Armenia still feels like Russia’s fore post, Armenia’s foreign politics will go along at the same pace.”
Vice-speaker of the National Assembly Tigran Torosyan believes that there is no need to individualize everything.
“It’s obvious that the president of each country deals with the country’s foreign relations and many things depend on the president. Changing the president may change the priorities of the country.”
In response to our question as to whether or not Armenia’s foreign politics would be the same if someone else were the president of Armenia, T. Torosyan said:
“I don’t want to discuss any concrete issues because each issue must be discussed in different aspects. Your questions are rather concrete. In any case, I don’t think that the issue should be tied to the individual.”