First, I would like to congratulate you and our entire nation on the International Day of Worker’s Solidarity, the relevance of which has particularly increased with the sad reality Armenia currently finds itself in.
Exactly two months have passed since the rally on 1 March, which is not a long period, but it has been one filled with many significant processes and events, the following four of which I want to bring to your attention:
1. The deterioration of the socio-economic situation;
2. The wrecking of the “case of seven”;
3. The deepening of the Armenian-Turkish dialogue;
4. Preparations for the elections of the mayor of Erevan.
What I will do below is attempt to present the positions of the Armenian National Congress regarding each of them in as brief a space as possible.
The Socio-Economic Situation
As we had predicted during the 1 March rally, great trials awaited the country’s economy, especially as a result of the impending danger that the dram would be devaluated. In particular, I had mentioned in my speech: “Very soon the government will have to abandon the policy of the artificial preservation of the fixed rate of the dram. Meanwhile, the dram will be depreciated not gradually, as it happened with the Russian ruble, but, simply, as a result of a galloping drop.” The plunge happened two days after the rally, i.e. on 3 March, revealing the bankrupt, if not criminal, nature of the policy pursued by the government and the Central Bank. Up to that point the authorities were assuring the public that the dram had a floating, rather than a fixed exchange rate, which proved to be a complete lie, since a currency with a floating exchange rate does not lose 30% of its value in one day. It became clear also that the $800 million from the reserves of the Central Bank had been spent not so much for shoring up the dram’s exchange rate, but for a completely different purpose. That sum, as well as the hard currency that has been collected as the public was exchanging it for the local currency, has wound up in the accounts of bankers, high officials and oligarchs, which cannot be characterized as anything but a plunder of our national wealth in broad daylight.
The authorities are now expressing their satisfaction that following the plunge on 3 March, the exchange rate of the dram has stabilized. But it is not clear why they are forgetting that as a result of the drop in the dram’s exchange rate and the subsequent hike in the prices caused by it, there has been an approximately 30% decrease in the population’s living standards. Relying on the iron-tight logic of the government, we can even consider the stabilization perfect if we take into account the very significant facts that in the first quarter of this year there was a negative growth of 6.1%, while the tax revenue has constituted only 40% of the number envisioned by the budget. One more stabilization like that and people will find themselves in the grip of total poverty. Although now the dram indeed has a floating exchange rate, it is also not clear why it is floating in one direction only – toward increasing and continuing loss of value. That can only mean that no economic stabilization can be achieved in the near future. We should not forget that the banks have found themselves in an extremely difficult situation because of the losses they have incurred for loans in drams, and because of the difficulties that have arisen in the repayments of the loans in dollars. Inevitably, these problems are going to bankrupt some of the banks, and as a result of that, the dram is going to lose much more of its value.
As a result of the devaluation of the dram and the increase in prices the Armenian economy is confronted with yet another alarming problem, which is the shrinking of the volume of trade and the resultant sharp decrease in the tax revenue. The budget has become nothing more than a piece of paper, and the government is operating on the basis of the most elementary bookkeeping instead of that law, which means that on any given day it spends as much as it collects, barely being able to cover the operational expenses of the government and to pay the salaries of its employees. The catastrophic decrease in the tax revenue has forced the authorities to tighten the administration of tax collection, to encourage arbitrariness on the part of the tax and duty collection agencies, using also the courts as an instrument for the same purpose. As in the past, the tax burden thus continues to fall disproportionately on the shoulders of the small and medium size businesses, which are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy even without that problem. Serge Sargsyan himself confessed during his last press-conference that the big business continues to evade taxes. If it was a sincere confession, it would have given hope that the situation would improve. But as long as Sargsyan occupies the post of the president, the big business will continue to evade taxes, because the latter is the most reliable base of his kleptocratic regime and the source of his personal enrichment.
Expressions of social discontent particularly in the ranks of taxi drivers, employees of open-air and retail markets have sharpened significantly in the period after the 1 March rally. Soon they may be joined by the unemployed and employees, whose salaries are paid from the state budget. These expressions are so far spontaneous and unorganized, but if their problems are not solved satisfactorily, they threaten to cause serious turmoil. The authorities are myopically trying to suppress these expressions of social discontent by intimidation and police operations, which is a very dangerous and counterproductive approach. Meanwhile, it was their duty to do the exact opposite, i.e. instead of strangling that discontent in its embryonic stage, hoping that it will not spread; they should have made an effort to solve the problems that have afflicted the owners of small and medium size businesses and the salaried employees. The state cannot wash its hands off the relations between the employers and the employees, between holders and renters of property. It is its duty to intervene actively and to monitor those relations. One could object that the laws are sufficient for managing those relations. But the whole problem is that conflicts arise because of violations of those laws, because of the arbitrariness of the officials, and because of the all-consuming corruption. If the state refrains from taking up that responsibility, tomorrow it will be done by unions, which, as a result of the state’s passivity will form, then gain in strength, because there is no other way of protecting the workers’ interests. Taking into account the importance of this issue and the imperative of avoiding social turmoil, the Armenian National Congress is ready to extend consulting and legal support for the formation of independent trade unions. We have declared many times that the creation of civil society in Armenia is the main goal of the Congress, and trade unions are one of the most important components of it.
The Inglorious End of the Case of Seven
Even though the Armenian National Congress has issued a special statement regarding this problem on 2 April of this year, I do not think it is unnecessary to explicate the importance of that significant event once again in front of this large audience. To understand the essence of the so-called “case of seven” (in reality in should be “case of eleven”), we should first try to understand why the case had been initiated. There can be no doubt that the goal was to prove to the world that the opposition was trying to take over with the use of violence, which then would justify the authorities’ response, which included opening fire on peaceful protesters, murdering ten people, and the declaration of the state of emergency. Accordingly, the court had been instructed to wrap up the case quickly and to render the stipulated verdict, which would confirm the official version of the events of 1 March. However, because of the perseverance of the popular movement, the courageous stance of the political prisoners, the competent strategy of the defense lawyers, as well as the intervention of the international organizations, that goal was stillborn. To save face, the authorities were forced to make serious changes in the criminal code, then to reformulate the charges on the bases of those changes and to dissolve the case into several cases.
With that, and particularly with the revoking of the charge under Article 300 of the Criminal Code, the authorities in effect confessed that the “case of seven” was fabricated from the start and that there has been no usurpation or even an attempt at usurpation of power by the opposition. Separating the case of the murders, meanwhile, amounts to a confession that the opposition’s actions had nothing to do with them. Thus the official version of the events of 1 March has finally gone up in smoke, and what we are left with is the blood chilling crime committed by the authorities themselves, every detail of which is going to be revealed sooner or later.
A question then arises as to what motivated the inadequate, or actually barbaric, behavior of the authorities on 1 March. Perhaps the mass disturbances organized by the opposition, which is what the reformulated charge against the aforementioned seven individuals is? Not only the fact of charging seven individuals as separate organizers of the same mass disturbance is a legal ignorance or downright absurd, there can be no doubt that these separated cases are going to have the same fate as the “mother case,” because no representative of the opposition has so far been charged with committing violent acts, burning cars or looting shops personally. Even if the court succeeds in issuing verdicts violating the law, these cases are going to go up in smoke in the European court.
As for who organized the mass disturbances, the burning of cars, and the looting of shops, I have spoken about it in front of a smaller audience during the first convention of the Armenian National Congress on 21 December 2008, stating in particular the following: “Based on information from reliable sources, we have determined that the burning of cars, the looting of shops, and other provocations on 1 March have been carried out by certain gangs, which have had 950 members between them. These gangs were formed, equipped, and put under the command of a center that was coordinating their activities by five high-ranking officials and four oligarchs…. The central office of the Armenian National Congress has made all the evidence about that available to the Fact-finding Group, to the Commissioner on Human Rights of the Council of Europe Thomas Hammarberg, and several foreign ambassadors stationed in Armenia.” The credibility of this information is confirmed by the fact that the Armenian authorities have categorically forbidden the Fact-finding Group to conduct an inspection at a Defense Ministry warehouse, which has provided the clothing to the aforementioned gangs. Respecting the confidentiality of the work of the Fact-finding Group, we will refrain from making the names of the leaders of those gangs public for now. These people are still holding high offices and influential economic positions. There should be no doubt that the day will come when we will make those names public, and everybody is going to see the sort of despicable criminals, who are holding the fate of Armenia and the Armenian nation in their hands.
Armenian-Turkish Relations
The unprecedented shifts in the Armenian-Turkish relations that we see today deserve a special assessment since they concern one of the most vital issues of the development of the Armenian statehood. I should stress immediately that with the exception of one of its member-organizations, the Armenian National Congress is in favor of a speedy normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations, and is ready to support all the positive steps of the Armenian authorities with regard to this issue. We only object to the creation of a special commission of Armenian and Turkish historians to study the Genocide, which we think can only mean denial of the Armenian Genocide.
Now let us see how the aforementioned shifts are manifested. It is clear that as a result of the contacts between Armenian and Turkish diplomats a working document has been created, which contains the following items:
– The establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey;
– Mutual recognition of borders;
– Opening of the Armenian-Turkish border;
– Creation of a commission consisting of Armenian and Turkish historians.
Subsequently this document was branded a “roadmap,” and some of its details were made public. Whatever its name, it seems that we are dealing with a serious intention to normalize the relations between the two states, especially when we take into account the impression that Turkey seems to have relinquished its unconstructive policy of making the resolution of the Karabakh conflict a precondition for the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations. But there are two issues that are casting a dark shadow over that impression. The idea of a commission of Armenian and Turkish historians was obviously going to create certain difficulties for the Armenian side, so in the end it has succeeded in renaming the commission as intergovernmental. But that is only a way of pulling a veil over the issue and using a euphemism that intends to placate the Armenian people, because the intergovernmental commission is also going to have a unit of historians, which leaves the essence of the problem unchanged. The Turkish side also cannot ignore the pressure from the Azerbaijani public and its own opposition, and therefore it is going to have to return to its prior position. In other words, despite the optimistic predictions, the relations between Armenia and Turkey are not going to get normalized and the Armenian-Turkish border is not going to be opened as long as tangible progress has been made in the efforts to resolve the Karabakh conflict.
We have to wonder then what the purpose of all this noise was. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is going to have a bitter taste for the Armenian people. The whole problem is that aside from the general disposition to normalize the relations, Turkey had another minimal and specific aim, which was to prevent the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the US President Barak Obama and the American Congress at any cost. Turkey has reached its goal, Armenia has been left empty-handed, and the Diaspora has been disillusioned. The first half of the football diplomacy has ended with a score of 1:0 in Turkey’s favor.
Turkish leaders presented Barak Obama with the aforementioned document worked out by Armenian and Turkish diplomats, and as could be expected, easily convinced him that serious process has been launched to normalize the Armenian-Turkish relations. With praiseworthy candor Obama declared that he has not changed his view on the Armenian Genocide, but as is fitting to a statesman, explained that he is not going to impede that process, implying that the recognition of the Armenian Genocide is being pulled out of the US agenda for now.
Is it appropriate to accuse Turkey and the US in hypocrisy? Not at all. Turkey achieved its main goal at this stage, displaying enviable diplomatic dexterity. And the president of the USA acted as any responsible leader would have acted in the circumstances. If there is any need to look for targets for our accusations, the Armenian authorities of the last 11 years represented by Robert Kocharian, Vardan Oskanyan, Serge Sargsyan, and Edward Nalbandian should be those targets, since they are the ones who have desecrated the sacred memory of the Genocide turning it into an object of political auction and bargaining. And they did that not in the name of some lofty national goal or in order to strengthen our state, but exclusively for the pitiful purpose of gaining Diaspora’s favor and earning certain dividends in our internal politics.
In this regard it is quite interesting to trace the evolution of their utterly bankrupt and harmful policy:
– The first thing the Kocharian administration did was to declare as treasonous the previous administration’s policy of establishing normal relations with Turkey without any preconditions.
– The international recognition of the Genocide was declared as the cornerstone of Armenia’s foreign policy, which was also boastfully submitted to Turkey as a rational basis for normalizing the relations.
– When after resisting for a long time they realized that the road they chose led to a deadlock, they returned to the same policy of establishing normal relations with Turkey without preconditions, which they had declared treasonous, inadvertently exposing Armenia’s weakness and giving Turkey an opportunity to harden its position.
– Both as a result of this objective reason, and in order to solve the problem of his legitimacy, Serge Sargsyan went to an even more dangerous extreme of agreeing to an almost forgotten proposal made by Recep Erdogan years ago about establishing a commission of Armenian and Turkish historians to study the Genocide.
It is this string of political wanderings, myopic steps, and irresponsible actions that produced the results of Obama’s visit to Turkey. Of course, one cannot insist that had it not been for the aforementioned process launched to normalize the Armenian-Turkish relations, Obama already as president of the USA would have uttered the word “genocide” in his 24 April address, or that the American Congress would have passed a resolution recognizing the Genocide. Situations like this have existed in the past, but things never got to that point. But the situation is substantially different this time, because unlike in the past, this time the formal excuse is Serge Sargsyan’s ill-fated initiative to have a rapprochement with Turkey at any cost, including the cost of renunciation of the Genocide. Thus without a shred of exaggeration we have to conclude: In order to keep his hold on power, Serge Sargsyan has literally sold the Genocide. Without a doubt his next step is going to be to sell Karabakh, after which naturally he will be the first Armenian to be awarded the Nobel Prize.
I am being kind. I am sure Sargsyan’s behavior is going to attract much more ruthless assessments from the radical circles in Armenia, and especially in the Diaspora. Justice demands, however, that we apportion at least part of the blame to the chiefs of the Diaspora, who not only never warned the Armenian authorities about the dangers and harmfulness of putting the issue of the international recognition of Genocide on the state’s official agenda, but encouraged the latter’s efforts and praised their “heroics” in the end getting what they got. The enormous effort and financial resources invested by the Diaspora for the cause of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide thus were wasted in one day. It is difficult to imagine how the situation can be remedied and the loss recovered.
Even with all this, even with the sad result with which the current process of normalizing the Armenian-Turkish relations has ended, it is not at all devoid of positive elements. Turkey’s natural interest in the normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations on the one hand, and the linking of that normalization to expected shifts in the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, on the other, creates a certain impetus for pushing the process settling the Karabakh conflict forward. The fact that the circumstances have forced President Obama to assume moral responsibility is also a positive development, which obligates the country he governs to get more actively and impartially involved both in the process of normalizing the Armenian-Turkish relations and in the process of finding a resolution to the Karabakh conflict. Barak Obama is an idealist in the best sense of the word. It is well known that although the world is usually governed by pragmatic and cynical people, civilization moves forward thanks to the occasionally appearing idealists. And by idealist I do not mean ideologues, but rather the rare statesmen, who have firm principles of morality, honor, and justice.
The Elections of Erevan’s Mayor
When the Armenian National Congress announced that it is going to participate in the elections of Erevan’s mayor under my leadership, the first reaction from the governing camp was that the Congress is politicizing the elections, implying that a crime is being committed that has no parallels in world history. The politicization of any question is equivalent to a plague for people who react in that manner and something people should escape in a mad rush. First, by doing this the forces that comprise the coalition are putting themselves in a ridiculous situation, because they themselves have politicized it to the extreme by adopting a 100% proportional system for the elections of the mayor of Erevan. Second, with such a reaction they are giving away their criminal nature, because the alternative to politicization is nothing other than criminalization.
It is high time to realize that they are no issues in a state that are apolitical, because the essence of a state is politics. If it was not so, what would the meaning of concepts like economic policy, social policy, agrarian policy, educational policy, cultural policy, health care policy, and other similar concepts be? Even the concepts “state” and “politics” have common origins, if we take into account the fact that the world “politics” has originated from the Greek word “polis” (city-state). This was understood even in the middle ages, which is evidenced by the fact that the 13th century Armenian thinker Hovannes Yerznkatsi uses the word “city” to mean state.
In addition to accusing the Congress of politicizing the elections, the official propaganda is trying to put the Congress in an uncomfortable position with another ridiculous trick, namely by endowing the mayor only with the lowly authority of garbage collector as it understands the position. First, who said that collecting garbage is not an important job? And secondly, if garbage collecting is the mayor’s only job, why is only a single line dedicated to it in the 60-page long law on Yerevan, whereas the rest is dedicated to politics? If after this explanation opinions are voiced again that the Congress is politicizing the elections, the Congress should only be thanked for it, because by doing so it is trying to prevent the criminalization of the elections.
Today I have no intention of engaging in election campaigning. That we will do during our upcoming rallies. But I cannot fail to draw your attention to one last very important question having to do with the elections. What would have happened if the Armenian National Congress were to decide not to participate in the elections? Undoubtedly, the same thing would happen as did during the parliamentary elections of 2007. The appearance would have been that of a free and fair election, the representative of the authorities would win convincingly, and the international observers would assess the elections as yet another significant step on the path of democratizing the country. Serge Sargsyan would turn the result of that election into a banner, would be able to legitimize the rigged presidential elections of 2008 to some degree, and would earn enormous credit in the eyes of the international community.
If Sargsyan is really concerned about the reputation of his country, he has the opportunity to achieve that goal even today. He can conduct legitimate elections, which will earn both the international observers’ and our society’s praise. He should realize finally that not just the authorities’, but even the opposition’s victory in legitimate elections strengthens the state and shields it from international pressures. Otherwise, he will never earn the right to be called a statesman. But if acting narrow-mindedly, Sargsyan does the same thing as he did during the presidential elections, not refraining not only from blatant falsification, but also from using violence, he will inflict another heavy blow on our state, which may be unable to recover from it this time. Making sure that the mayor’s elections are conducted properly is Serge Sargsyan’s last chance to earn some credibility in the eyes of the Armenian society and the international community. He can fail to exploit that opportunity only at the expense of the Armenian state’s interests.
Thus beginning tomorrow we are entering a new phase in the campaign, which is significantly different from the presidential campaign in one essential feature – the unity of the opposition – and which is going to reduce greatly the authorities’ opportunity to falsify the results of these elections. We regret that the effort to participate in the elections with a joint list of the Armenian National Congress and the Heritage Party did not succeed. We appreciate at the same time the decision of the Heritage Party not to participate with a separate list in order not to split the oppositional vote. We are also convinced that the Heritage Party will do everything to support the opposition in the upcoming elections.
Our next rally, which will already be a campaign rally, will take place on 15 May. We are planning to hold rallies and meetings with the voters in Erevan’s districts as well. I want to inform you in addition that in all of the offices of the Armenian National Congress there will be special units accepting your written proposals about the problems of the city, which will be meticulously examined and taken into account in our future work. And now let us go on to the march, the path and the procedure for which will be introduced to you by the coordinator of the central office of the Armenian National Congress Levon Zourabian.