– Mr. Hovhannisyan, how do you as a former presidential candidate estimate the activity of the incumbent government? Are you satisfied?
– The current president and the government are presently implementing many of the provisions of my platform. If we found the activity of the government unsatisfactory we wouldn’t join the coalition. Time is needed to really assess the government activity high or good. We see certain positive changes in certain sectors and prospects of development. First the government is facing many problems in economy, which doesn’t necessarily have to be connected with corruption level. There is necessity of systematic changes. The government has launched those changes but time is needed to see the positive outcome. I am satisfied with the fact that I see certain progress.
– Is there anything you are not satisfied with?
– To be honest, I am not ready to answer this question yet.
– There is an opinion that the ARF is discontent with the incumbent government and the expression was that to call back three of its ministers simultaneously in the tense environment.
– If we were dissatisfied we wouldn’t replace our ministers. The change of ministers is only representative and merely an internal party decision. Don’t rely on the media too much, including yours. They write whatever comes into mind about me.
– They write that you had certain expectations when you resigned from the post of the deputy-chairman of the Parliament, however they didn’t offer you a post.
– It is dumb. Now I am happy that can be engaged with party activities. My current objective is to strengthen the party. No you are mistaken. For me it is an honor to be MP, head the faction and be a member of the ARF Bureau. I am not striving for a state post. The decision to run the presidential race was a different thing.
– There were rumors that you wanted to be a leader of some law-enforcement structure or be elected Mayor of Yerevan.
– I don’t have such intentions and let the potential competitors not be concerned with that. I was striving to become a president. I had opponents and one of them won. I congratulated him and work with him. I have so much more to do that am not seeking for some new areas to be involved in.
– There is also an opinion that together with our candidates you fragmented the votes of the opposition.
– It is absolute dumbness. If it was so we wouldn’t have the votes we had.
– How would it be?
– I don’t have a wish to answer that question but on the other hand you and some others may think that way. Who told you if I wasn’t there the voters of mine would vote for the opposition. The ones, who voted for me wouldn’t vote for Ter-Petrosyan even being threatened by gun. It may be right for some other candidates but not for me because my voters are loyal to me no matter what. They wouldn’t vote for Ter-Petrosyan even if they knew they are going to die.
– Are you planning to stay an MP till the next national elections or you may submit a state job if offered?
– Nothing is excluded in this life. I am a member of the highest echelon of the party and my political activity is determined by the party decision.
– In your opinion why do so many people participate in the opposition rallies?
– If 46-47% of the population hasn’t voted for the current president it means that there are many people, who are dissatisfied with the economic, social and political state. It means that there are people in Armenia, who are discontent with the cruel policeman, skinhead bodyguards, impunity and bribery. I don’t think the government doesn’t see this. The objective of the government is to implement a policy to reduce the number of complainers through its wise policies. These complaints must be reduced through reforming the tax and customs policies, judicial system, etc. There are also subjective complainers, such as the ANM, who lost the government and are now trying to retrieve it.
– There were similar reasons of discontent in the previous 10 years when the ARF was part of the government and was coordinating serious sectors.
– I am not saying that there were no shortcomings in the sectors coordinated by the Dashnaks but we did our best. These sectors are not independent states and they are all adjunct in one governmental system. You cannot make one sector perfect and leave the other one stingy.
– However, the majority of the society is not represented in the society and mostly the ones, who complain a lot. Do you find it normal?
– Here you need to blame the opposition because it wasn’t capable of uniting because if you add the votes of minor opposition parties you will have at least 30% of votes. For example, Stepan Demirchyan’s, Geghamyan’s and many other leaders’ parties as well as the ANM had 1, 5, 2, 3 percent of votes. They should have been able to sacrifice their ambitions and establish a normal faction in the Parliament. They were not able to unite. That’s why their votes were nullified. Even if the government conduced to the nullification of their votes they should have been so strong not to be tempted by the government. There was temptation, right? And certain people did their best to fragment the opposition field. As a result a small opposition party was elected.
– What do you think about the demand of the opposition to fire Aghvan Hovsepyan, Alexan Harutyunyan, Hovik Abrahamyan and Armen Gevorgyan?
– I think that the opposition tactics is declining. First they were demanding extraordinary national elections and now they want certain officials to resign.
– What do you think about the statement of Serzh Sargsyan, which he made in Moscow, according to which he said that Armenia may agree to establish a committee of historians to examine the issue of Genocide if Turkey agrees to open the Turkish-Armenian border?
– Honestly I don’t want to pertain to the editorial part of the statement. Our conviction is that no leader in Armenia can ever agree on arguing on the issue of Genocide because it had already been recognized by the world. But we may have discussions to speak about the mistakes of the history to ensure that such crimes are never repeated again. Under these circumstances we need a working group or committee to speak about the drawbacks and aftermath of the Genocide but there can be no committee to argue about the fact of the Genocide.
– Member of the ARF Bureau Hrant Margaryan made an opinion that Sargsyan received a bad advice regarding the abovementioned statement. Do you also think it is a result of bad advice?
– I don’t know whether he was advised or made the statement intentionally but our standpoint is clear. Another issue is to argue whether it was worth making such a statement.
– Was it worth?
– Perhaps it was worth. I think we should interpret it this way. Turkey made a suggestion like that and there was a response on part of Robert Kocharyan. We haven’t received a new response from Turkey yet. We don’t mind such normal diplomatic relations with Turkey. As of the opening of the border we are not the ones, who closed it. Turkey must open it as it is an issue of their agenda.
– But it is Armenia that needs the opening of the border most.
– It is not so. Unfortunately during the period of blockade the Armenian economy has gradually gotten used to the closed borders. First of all the importers will benefit from the opening of the border. The local producers will not benefit much from this. Of course we understand that the importation and exportation are interrelated but we prioritize the development of the local production.
– After the opening of the border we will have new markets as a result of which the local markets will develop.
– First will Armenia turn into a market? Is our economy adapted to withstand the outside competition? It would be not bad if this process of adaptation was launched now. But we cannot say that the opening of borders is profitable only for Armenia and not Turkey. The opening of the border will bring huge political dividends to Turkey because their number one political priority is to become an EU member. It means that the opening of the border will bring incomparably more dividends to Turkey than to Armenia.
– There is an opinion that in the international arena Armenia is recently mostly losing. What do you think about that?
– It has both objective and subjective reasons. The first one is international conflicts in the countries, which have subjective reasons. The radical opposition put Armenia into hazard intentionally and unintentionally. It is quite natural that in this background the Turkish-Azerbaijani advocacy against Armenia was even more activated. The second reason is that the issues, which have been accumulated in years had become more visible and urgent right now. The local diplomats haven’t tried hard to annihilate these reasons thinking that the Diaspora is so confident of the truthfulness of the Armenian government regarding the NKR conflict resolution that there was no need to mediate. They were thinking that there is no need to explain anything to the international community. But as you see it is not so. The second objective reason is that the Turkish-Azerbaijani campaign has a lot of money. It spends a lot of financial means. Just a simple comparison. Armenia doesn’t have any embassies in any of the Scandinavian states. Azerbaijan does in all. Our embassies are not equipped with quality diplomats because good staffers were not prepared here. These reasons have caused the unfortunate consequences that you just mentioned. But it doesn’t mean that we should feel like we had lost and we should wait for the next hit. We should learn from mistakes and go on. In general the most common deficit in Armenia is the normal job in any sector – diplomacy, National Assembly, etc.
– Recently there was a publication in the media, according to which the ARF had decided to establish a media holding, which will be coordinated by former minister Aghvan Vardanyan. Is this true?
– Yes, there will be certain changes in our prospects. Of course, as a specialist Aghvan Hovsepyan will be in charge of that but it doesn’t mean that he will not participate in the activities of the Bureau. Our activity is divided into different sectors – coordination of the Hay Dat office and the working with the Diaspora.
– Who coordinates those activities now?
– I won’t tell you.