As we have promised, we are discussing the platforms of the presidential candidates. Let’s start from Vahan Hovhannisyan’s program. There aren’t any bad programs and no one says that they are coming to embezzle and make crimes.
Everyone (besides Serzh Sargsyan) says that now we are living in such country, which is being embezzled and people can’t live well. It is strange that Vahan Hovhannisyan criticizes both the present and past times as the opposition powers too. After reading the program a question originates whether he is the same Vahan Hovhannisyan, i.e. the vice speaker of the parliament and the leader of a political power which has been de-facto supporting president Kocharyan since 2000, is a part of the government since 2003 and now is a party to the ruling coalition and has some ministers’ portfolios.
“Misunderstanding of liberal ideologies and their extreme application, ignorance of the main factors of a social state, decreasing the role of the state in regulating free market have resulted in the existing economic regime, when the state is governed by some groups having major influence on the economy. They have monopolized the most profitable fields of the economy and formed a system, which is led by personal interests and serves for the purposes of some groups,” writes Vahan Hovhannisyan’s program. Who does misunderstand the ideologies? Who has ignored the role of the state in forming a liberal economy? It is not clear. They didn’t have to write names, but at least they should have made it clear whether they mean the existing or the previous authorities.
Vahan Hovhannisyan’s program has a separate section dedicated to the economy and monopolies. “Monopolies are not an economic factor any more. They have a great influence on all spheres of activities of the society starting from state and constitutional values and ending up with moral standards. This group wastes huge money and uses its administrative resources to be reproduced, thus preventing the political system from developing”.
The ARF candidate promises that “the state policy will be targeted at dispersing the powers and opportunities of the groups, which have great economic influence, or at least limiting their powers”. As we have mentioned, it does not make it clear who those groups are and how they are going to disperse them. It is worth mentioning that during the constitutional amendment in 2005 a provision was adopted, which in fact allows monopolies: “Competition limitations, possible types of monopolies and their permitted capacities can be established only by the law if it is necessary to protect the interests of the society”. It is strange that the authorities, including the existing campaign manager of Vahan Hovhannisyan, were trying to convince that the mentioned provision was necessary to struggle against shady incomes of monopolies. In fact they were mistaken in consideration of the fact that now they confess that the situation with monopolies is poor in Armenia.
There are also provisions concerning enforcement of the constitutional rights, social fairness and happy society, independent judicial system, etc. By the way, all these things are connected with economy too. There is no sense to speak about free and fair competition without an independent judicial system. The program does not show the ways how the independent judicial system is to be formed. Let’s remind some facts from the past again: during the constitutional referendum the authorities, including the ARF, were convincing us that it would help the improvement of the judicial system. However, the fact is that just in two years after the Constitution was adopted first instance judge Pargev Ohanyan was deprived of his rights as a court, which has been the worst thing in the Armenian judicial system so far.
Generally Vahan Hovhannisyan thinks that the state should not stay out of the economic processes and if necessary it should take certain actions to prevent the negative results, failures of any competition mechanisms. The program also writes that it is very important to raise the economic activeness of citizens, develop democracy in production and give opportunity to citizens to do business, develop small and medium businesses based on the advantages of professional relations.
As the economy is directly connected with foreign affairs too, let’s refer to Vahan Hovhannisyan’s policy concerning the relations with Turkey. For instance, despite Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who emphasizes the need to develop dialogue and open the borders, the ARF candidate’s policy is very critical: “Armenia should address the issues concerning Turkey’s responsibility for their enmity to us, the Armenian-Turkish border and the Armenian Genocide at international institutions”.
Vahan Hovhannisyan’s program seems to be a typical opposition program, especially due to its economic content: “The rich groups of people, who have political power, often are ignoring the law and the state order, abusing the human rights and freedoms, preventing national and democratic development processes by intimidating and directing the votes of economically dependant voters during elections”. In other words, the program openly hints that the country is governed by criminals. Even though there are no names in the program, the manner how it is addressed to a group of people shows that it means the existing top authorities. As for them, they think that they are not among such people.
In fact, both the program and their speeches are to say that they know the ways how to work out those shortcomings and that they will work for that purpose. Vahan Hovhannisyan said before the parliamentary elections that the ARF had the key to the solution of all problems and that they would say everything when the time comes. We can’t see that key in the pre-election program of Vahan Hovhannisyan. It just reminds that Vahan Hovhannisyan still has that key and explains that we will live in a good country if he has the opportunity to use that key to open the doors. This is a policy standing too.