Even though the long awaited “heated political meetings” did not take
place, however, the last week of November was full of political events.
In addition, perhaps those events might be looked at as having nothing
to do with one another from first sight, but the order in which they
follow says a lot about the political processes in Armenia as a whole.
First of all, it was a surprise to see former Armenian president Levon
Ter-Petrosyan coming back into the game of politics. He broke the seven
year long silence and got back on the issue of the Karabagh peace
settlement. Of course, the main point was not the registration of
documents or that we have had severe losses in the past peace
negotiations, but rather that we can not have what we had in 1997. The
subtext of it all is much more important: the situation is getting
worse, thus we are again losing time and we will have more severe
losses if we continue to avoid choosing between what is “bad and
worse”. While all of this is going on, foreign media started to express
its opinions about the whole thing. Some of them were claiming that the
democratic authorities headed by Yushchenko will win in the Ukrainian
elections and the “next” runner up is Armenia. Of course, these are
just opinions. In contrast to opinions, what Robert Kocharyan thinks
can be considered to be more than an opinion for some, but rather a big
step. He simply congratulated Yanukovichin on his election and
emphasized the role that Russian foreign politics continue to play for
Armenia. But what remained unclear was why the President was in a rush
to do that when the Ukrainian authorities had declared the results of
the second stage of elections as invalid and the Constitutional Court
was continuing to discuss the matter. However, that was not the only
thing that the Armenian authorities rushed to do. According to a
decision made recently, President Kocharyan was granted the right to
appoint the Chief of Military Police (MP) and, as a result, the last
militarized structure was under 100% control of the President. There
were also discussions about handing over the power-engineering to
Russia. Another thing that became an issue was Vorotan’s hydro-electric
station. Many inter-political events took place during this time. The
three political parties, including the Armenian People’s Party, the
“Ramkavar” party (Armenian Liberal Democratic Party) and the “Hzor
Hayrenik” (Strong Nation) political party that had been defeated in the
2003 parliamentary elections, decided to form a union. There is no
doubt that this union will pass the 5% ban on getting votes in case
there is an election. Although the next elections will be in 2007,
however, unions like this one are being formed before the elections. In
any case, we get the impression that parliamentary elections in Armenia
are taking shape before the official elections.
The opposition also plans on forming coalitions, particularly
with plans on showing resistance to any debates with foreign countries
(this refers to the Karabagh peace settlement). Vazgen Manukyan, Ashot
Manucharyan and Paruyr Hayrikyan are the three political figures
involved in this and they were the ones who also put heads together in
1996. As a result, Robert Kocharyan got elected in 1998 and Karabagh
was no longer a matter of discussion. Other “mobile unions” are being
formed at a rather rapid pace. The “Nig-Aparan” patriotic union is
being strengthened, regional chief of the Syunik region Surik
Khachatryan is also trying to form a union like the one mentioned
above, and Samvel Babayan is trying to make his way back into politics.
In a word, it seems as if everyone is getting ready for a big battle. However, all of this seems more like “uneasiness”.