The “Armenian National Movement” political party will participate in the upcoming Armenian presidential elections with its own candidate. The party will convene a session in a couple of months where it will nominate its candidate and everyone knows who it will be: first president of the Republic of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan. This is what the president of the ANM administration, Ararat Zurabyan, announced on Wednesday during a press conference at the “Pastark” club.
“When nominations begin, that is when you will all see that there is going to be a different election campaign and the elections are going to take a different path. These elections (the upcoming Armenian presidential elections-R.T.) will truly differ and are not going to be what the authorities expect,” assured Zurabyan.
He argued that Serge Sargsyan is evidently preparing for the presidential elections. The ANM administration president finds that Sargsyan won’t be able to win in the elections.
“When we talk about Levon Ter-Petrosyan as the presidential candidate, we base that on the following: it is evident that there has to be an unknown, political party that can defeat Serge Sargsyan. If we list the names of the people who have applied to participate in the elections, we will see that among them there aren’t any people who can win. So, anyone can win, but I think that none of them can register the result of the victory,” Zurabyan mentioned. As for the consolidation of the opposition, he said that he doesn’t care at all whether a part of the opposition will be united or not because that part of the opposition’s “specific weight on the political processes in terms of influence is close to or is zero”.
“There can be fifty candidates because Sargsyan can pay at least fifty people to offer their candidacies for president, so in the end he can say that there was no united candidate. This is not the problem. The problem is for us to be able to form a center that can be a counterbalance to the pro-government candidate,” says Zurabyan.
And the most important question: has the first president given his consent for his nomination? In response to this, the president of the ANM administration said “Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s consent will come only a few days before his nomination.” Zurabyan noted that the challenges and problems addressed by the first president ten years ago are still present today, and those who used to talk about independent Karabakh with 8,000 square kilometers of land “should respond to the day-to-day war threats made by Azerbaijan”. Zurabyan himself responded, in the place of the authorities, to those threats by mentioning the following:
“Being a citizen of Armenia and representing a political party that achieved a military victory, I announce that the ANM is ready to take on the political responsibility for a state of war and win once again in any war that we are forced to fight.”
Referring to the recent announcement made by representative of the “Republic” party, Suren Surenyants, according to which the right-wing parties must disband and there must be one strong party, Zurabyan said:
“Surenyants mentioned that a “peace party” must be founded. I think that that is a reference made to the corresponding article written by Ter-Petrosyan, and in my opinion everyone understands which parties those are when they read about the “peace and war parties”. So, there has initially been a “peace party” and that is the ANM.”
Later, according to the speaker, each political party in the right-liberal wing was founded by people who left the ANM or people who had some interests in that wing. According to Zurabyan, in that sense the best example is the “21st century” party that disbanded a couple of years ago and joined the ANM.
“We have to at least get unaccustomed to having the authorities dictate. The basis of that custom is the following: new political parties form before each electoral process or parties that simply declare some new appeal or bid. We have to get rid of that logic and take a different route. I am certain that there is no contradiction between the ideological approaches and principles of the ANM, “Republic” and certain other political parties. So, we must be guided by the fact that the ANM has been around since 1988, it already has a certain traditional character and in that sense, I think that it would be right for these parties to take that route,” said the president of the ANM administration. The latter believes that the National Assembly deputies “elected” on May 12 must be disbanded after the 2008 presidential elections and the results of the constitutional amendments referendum must be reviewed. Recalling that there was a time when Vano Siradeghyan managed to clean Armenia of certain criminal elements and the “district good-old-boys”, Zurabyan noted that that “reformatory work” is going on today. According to him, it is because when the authorities are illegitimate that they must try to form the illegitimate structures based on which they will be able to solve their issues.
“Let’s say that we need someone whom the people are afraid of to get the residents of a building to vote, and this mechanism is implemented in a refined way. As a result of this, you have numerous crimes taking place which the presses write about, however after a couple of days the issue is no longer current, and starts to get covered up. For example, take the recent events in Gyumri,” he said.
“Just how expected was the entrance of “Legal State” and “Heritage” in parliament?” In response to this, the speaker responded that it was obvious that some opposition parties had to be in parliament.
“It is also evident that if we take the same authorities and ask them whom they would like to see in parliament, I am absolutely sure that they wouldn’t like to see, for example, ANM in parliament because it is clear that a truly political debate would emerge. “Heritage” talks about co-operating with all parties…It is somewhat similar to the position of the ANM, which announces that it is pro-government and also partially oppositional. There is an incomprehensible process taking place here,” Zurabyan said in closing.