“Racist” approach on part of the country-builders

15/03/2008 Rafael TEYMURAZYAN

As of yesterday the rally of the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan still continues on the 9th day in the Liberty Square.

The number of protestors, who spend the night in the Liberty Square, increases day by day. The evidence of this is the increase of the tents. During yesterday’s rally the representative of the Alternative Initiative Nikol Pashinyan mentioned that at present the Liberty Square looks like Armenia in 1992-1994. At that time almost every day the gas pipeline entering Armenia was being blown up and now some of the policemen are stealing the timber from the protestors in order to burn and warm up. Other elements of similarity were also mentioned. Yesterday various critical attacks were made against Sos Sargsyan, Henrik Igityan, Zori Balayan and others, who have recently made a joint statement accusing Ter-Petrosyan’s movement. By the way, during the past days the arrests and apartment search of Ter-Petrosyan’s supporters were continuing. The court has defined a two-month custody for Seryozha Siradeghyan, the brother of the former Mayor of Yerevan Vano Siradeghyan. Yesterday publicist Tigran Paskevichyan offered to imagine how Seryozha Siradeghyan, beekeeper, leads his bees to the government building just like in cartoons to organize a revolution. And Ter-Petrosyan in his speech spoke about the international reaction on the Armenian elections. He spoke about the recent statement made by the US Ambassador in the OSCE, who mentioned that the recent developments in Armenia are far from perfect. He focused on the standpoint of international structures. He said that they don’t have a very serious attitude to their monitoring mission and are busy with pure math and meanwhile ignore various violations, scuffling, total TV blockade, etc. By mentioning if one of the registered violations was in a European state the people wouldn’t live with this. It would become a reason of a new French revolution. Ter-Petrosyan mentioned that for international monitors what’s unacceptable for European states is acceptable for Armenia. “This is a racist approach,” said Ter-Petrosyan. Of course, during yesterday’s rally they also poke about Artur Baghdasaryan, who had recently joined Serzh Sargsyan. In the square one could already see flags reading, “Artur traitor,” “Legal State betrayed members, join us,” etc. Earlier that day Pashinyan has already spoken about Baghdasaryan’s deed by saying, “this person was named a traitor of the nation several months ago by Kocharyan. The rest is clear already.” Yesterday a crowded march took place on the Northern Avenue-Abovyan, Grigor Lusavorich-Italy-Nalbandyan-Tumanyan streets. One of the posters of the protestors read, “Artur Geghamyan.” By the way, yesterday certain Legal State members would approach the rostrum and say that they are disappointed and refuse their Legal State membership. In this regard, the Legal State released a statement, which reads, “We find it urgent to inform the society that those were not Legal State members because their membership tickets were old samples. Those samples had been considered invalid since Baghdasaryan left his Speaker’s post at the Parliament and only the party board members have new samples of membership tickets.” As it’s known the Legal State board consists of approximately a dozen of members. The following statement proves that the actual number of the Legal State members coordinates to the number of the new sample of party tickets. Let’s note that such rallies were also organized in Vanadzor and Noyemberyan cities.