– Do you think that the mayoral election of Yerevan is so important that first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan really wants to be elected?
– I think that the mayoral election of Yerevan is really very important in consideration of the fact that Yerevan has dominating power in the economic, cultural and political life of the country. The city council elections are important too because the institute of the mayor consists of two levels and the mayor is to be elected by the city council members. The elections in Armenia are not fully democratic. However for the first time in the history the citizens of Yerevan have the opportunity to elect a mayor. Even though they are electing the mayor through the community council elections, but still it is a good opportunity. That is why the elections are so important and of course this is a political event. If Levon Ter-Petrosyan is elected, the power in the country will be divided in two parts and it may result in a serious misbalance. If the opposition gets so many places in the council’s institute to the extent of being to fail the procedures in favor of their own policy, it may become the beginning of collapsing the power of the incumbent authorities. This is the main objective of the opposition expected from this election. I get pleasure when Levon Ter-Petrosyan says that the state which was established by him and the basements of which are rusted is cleptocracy (I have written about this far in 90s). In a word, it comes to prove that my analysis published for the society is true.
– Do you think that as a result of failing to join with the ANC the Heritage undermined the ANC’s victory? Don’t you think it may fail the plan of separating the power as you said above?
– Certainly Raffi Hovhannisyan’s participation in the opposition’s list would be beneficial because his party is the only opposition party that has places in electoral commissions. Thus, if the Heritage does not participate, its representatives in electoral commissions will not do their job in a duly manner because their political power does not take part in the elections. It doesn’t matter what they say, it is clear that they will not be very effective in preventing electoral violations. This is a fact. This fact means that the opposition has lost opportunities. However these opportunities would not be lost if the ANC adopted another policy of forming the pre-election list. Specifically, I was surprised to see people with the same surnames in the pre-election list. Such policy is not consistent with democratic principles, which reject the principal of feudal heredity. Are the best people in the ANC the sons of the leaders of those parties? Is this the professional potential of those parties? If yes, what can the ANC do? I think that the list had to be formed according to a very simple principle: politicians should have been in the first three places, and the other candidates should have been professionals who are experienced in local government. In other words, if the opposition is trying to prove that the Tatar-Mongolian traditions are not the shortcomings of the Armenian politics but people such as Galust Sahakyan, they should have not included sons of politicians in their pre-election lists.
– Why are not you included in the pre-election list?
– I have nothing to do in local government. In the most difficult times I was MP of the second and third convocations of the parliament and I have never been a community head or governor. I am dealing with geopolitical issues and I am famous with my political researches. I don’t have time to be involved in social issues. It would be strange if I tried to become a community council member. If I have the opportunity to correct my mistake that I failed to participate in the presidential elections 2007 under majoritarian system I will not lose any opportunity to run for parliament in any format.
– Neither Levon Ter-Petrosyan or Stepan Demirchyan have ever been governors.
– I said that the first three places should be given to politicians and the other ones to professionals. I mean that the other places after the first three ones should not be given to party leaders or politicians. For example, Lyudmila Sargsyan should not have been included in the list. She is very good in issues such as the relations between the Diaspora and Armenia, but she is not professional in issues local government managers should handle. If you don’t know anything about scavenging you can’t find ways of grabbing money, thus you can’t control the work of the municipality and the mayor’s office. If the professional standards complied with what I said, this bad situation would not exist, which is more dangerous to the ANC than the failure of the Heritage to join them. Marxist David Hakobyan’s announcements are more dangerous to the ANC than the policy of the Heritage and their failure to endorse the ANC. These conflicts would not exist if the principle was clear. I mean the principle according to which the first three places should have been given to politicians, and the other ones to professionals.
– Movses Shahverdyan, chairman of the Armenian Labor Socialistic party, whose party will participate in the upcoming mayoral election as well, says that he will use the name of Karen Demirchyan in his campaign because he has worked with him to found the PPA. As you are a co-founder of the PPA as well, what do you think about this announcement?
– Yes, I know what he said. He did not take part in founding the PPA and he used to say that we could use his party. The same thing was done by the communistic party and the chairman Sergey Badalyan. They wanted Karen Demirchyan to return to the Communistic party too. Mr. Shahverdyan, who had registered his party, thought that Karen Demirchyan had to rely on his party which endorsed him during the elections in 1998. Karen Demirchyan did not want to rely on any party and did not want any party to endorse him for that purpose. He participated in the campaign as an alternative to all the other political powers. I always thought that Demirchyan had to found a political party and only after that struggle for the president’s position. I had been trying to convince Karen Demirchyan to found a party named PPA since 1992. In 1993 Russian media wrote that Telman Gdlyan, who was a deputy of the Supreme Council of that time, might be appointed deputy prime minister of Russia. If he was elected he would have strong power in the Russian government. The pro-government party of that time Vibor Rossii applied to Yeltsin to appoint him deputy prime minister in charge of coordinating the police structures. At that time, when Gdlyan was on a white horse and was waiting for the time to be appointed in Russia’s deputy prime minister’s position, I arranged a meeting with Karen Demirchyan. I was trying to recruit Gdlyan in our team and convince him that if he helped us to found the mentioned party Karen Demirchyan would return to politics. This is the story. As for Shahverdyan, sometimes he used to visit Demirchyan at the factory. Demirchyan was a very kind person and it was easy to develop good relations with him. He differed from Ter-Petrosyan much. During the ten years after his presidency Ter-Petrosyan met only the people who had been working with him during his presidency. He had very few friends and loyal people, which was one of the obstacles hindering his return to politics. Demirchyan had a lot of friends. I became his teammate in 1994. He was ready to meet not only with people who had high state positions during the Soviet times, but people who were against him as well (for example, at the factory he often met with Azat Arshakyan, who had been a political prisoner). It was his nature.
Movses endorsed our team during the presidential elections 1998. If the people who were against us (for example Artashes Geghamyan) and people who did not do anything for our team dare to use Karen Demirchyan’s name, Shahverdyan’s case is different. He was in our team since 1998 and made best efforts to support Karen Demirchyan but it doesn’t give him a right to exaggerate his role. If people such as Armen Khachatryan could use our work and efforts to get high rank positions, Shahverdyan’s small tricks and the fact that he is exaggerating his role is not so weird. However, I would advise him to respect the rules of ethics.