During the days before the politicians’ vacation (vacation after which the presidential campaign will take full swing), there were opinions heard from different places about the possible return of the founding president of the first Republic of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan. On the one hand, the authorities [by way of Garnik Isagulyan] and on the other hand, the opposition [by way of Vazgen Manukyan] discussed a version which in essence doesn’t exist. In both cases, worry and panic were evident, which is without reason or basis.
In order to understand the worry and the panic, it is necessary to discuss the props of the authorities and the opposition and understand how they are constructed. The props of the authorities are the administrative resources, and the opposition leans on the support of the public, which is disappointed in the situation of the country. The so-called administrative resource are people who are guided not by ideas, rather by expediency. They must always be in power, have the money, the international loans, grants and aid. It is enough to have Levon Ter-Petrosyan announce about his return (after which his rating will immediately increase) and the administrative resource will go to waste. It should be noted that there are many people in that “public” who held high positions during the days of Ter-Petrosyan’s term, and they really don’t care who the boss is. In order to make this more clear I will state two examples.
Ara Babloyan, who became deputy with the Republican Party’s list, could have been health minister in a different case of distribution of the coalition. That was an office that he had held during the days of Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Member of the “Prosperous Armenia” party, Artavazd Kushkyan, who became health minister as a result of consent by the coalition, was developing his health care business during the presidential term of Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Now let’s understand: why should these people be against Ter-Petrosyan’s return, and what could their reasoning be, especially since the two of them were known for their admiration of Nzdehian ideas.
Levon Ter-Petrosyan is not Demirchyan, Geghamyan, and not Manukyan. Do the people with the administrative resource know what to say when they hear about the nomination of the first president? They will say that he is the founder of our Republic; they will say that he won in the Karabakh war (definitely remembering the difficult capture of Shushi); they won’t forget that it was during his term that the Constitution was accepted and that he is a balanced politician who respects the country’s independence; they will praise the silence that he kept during the past ten years for the stability of the country. Thus, they will enthusiastically assign the principals of schools and kindergartens, the heads of departments and communities, and the other subdivision officials to vote for Levon Ter-Petrosyan, only if they see his willingness to return and a fast rising rating.
Let me not forget to say that in this case nobody can talk about the danger of trusting the country to the inexperienced leader, which was done, let’s say, in the case of Stepan Demirchyan. This is the worry of the authorities, but what is the opposition panicking about?
The opposition formed due to public discontent is repeating the same thing since March 1998, while meditating, being afraid that the “whoever” in the phrase “Whoever, just not these” could be Levon Ter-Petrosyan. While the opposition parties make bets on who the one candidate is going to be, while Vazgen Manukyan gets the votes of his once strong party, while Raffi Hovhannisian discusses the day he turned citizen of Armenia, while “Legal State” will try to get in the oppositional field, Levon Ter-Petrosyan will announce that he is making an entrance and will get a considerable part of the electorates of the authorities and the opposition on his side.
But I want to calm both sides down by saying that the founding president of the Republic of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, is not going to run for president. If it were important for him to keep power for the sake of power, he would not have resigned and have left and perhaps he would have tried to run for president the third time in 2001. The reason for Ter-Petrosyan’s resignation was the misunderstanding of all this. His plan to have a safe and secure country failed, and our indifference was the reason for that failure.
As far as I know, Ter-Petrosyan has not changed his political views, or his views on peace and cooperation; instead misunderstanding and indifference have grown in Armenian society. On the other hand, it has become practically impossible to make compromises in a dignified manner. The politician who kept silence for ten years would hardly come to say “I was saying…” We see everything anyway. On this sad note, let us end this last period of the vacation and let’s try to recover.