It is an established fact that the opposition failed to change the power or find the true way to it during the past two years.
The representatives of the ANC understand that it is not good to speak of change of the government all the time and fail to do anything as people are expecting not social or cultural platforms from them but concrete mechanisms which will result in the change of the government. Definitely this is the reason why the ANC from time to time remembers about the biggest goal in order not to lose the constituency and keep people with them. As a rule, they speak of this at rallies. “The rally of September 17 will significantly differ from the other rallies, and the ANC leader’s speech will be a great surprise with many serious new points,” said ANC coordinator Levon Zurabyan. But it turns out that even the ANC parties don’t have serious expectations. Even more, many of them don’t expect any surprises. Several days ago former foreign minister and ANC member Alexander Arzumanyan asked to the question about what surprises there might be in Ter-Petrosyan’s speech and said the following with irony: “he may announce that Armenia is the integral part of China.” Furthermore, many ANC party leaders don’t expect anything from the ANC leader and even don’t know what he will speak about. It means that the leaders of the ANC member parties will get acquainted to the text of their leader’s speech at the rally like the ordinary citizens. Even if they do not agree with any statement or provision thereof, it will be viewed as the joint statement and opinion of the ANC.
The president of the ANM board Aram Manukyan, who will be the moderator of the rally, says that it is against the liberal and democratic principles to get acquainted to the text of Ter-Petrosyan’s speech. “No speeches or interviews or ideas are discussed in advance at the ANC or ANM, and it is a basic principle of democracy. This is neither a project nor a document and we are free to express our opinions, and these are not subject for approval in advance,” he said. In answer to our question whether any of the ANC political powers may disagree with certain provisions in their leader’s speech he said that it is a “provocation”. We wander what can be surprising in Ter-Petrosyan’s speech. “I don’t know what Ter-Petrosyan will speak about but I hope there will be new things and serious analysis. I believe there will be interesting things, but I don’t know the exact content. I want to believe Zurabyan, I mean I trust Zurabyan’s information, of course if it is a result of information,” said Manukyan. The chairman of Republic party Aram Sargsyan is not aware of the text of the speech either. “I am not aware of the speech, and generally I have never been informed of the president’s speech in advance before. The approximate directions have always been discussed but I don’t think it is correct to ask the text of the president in advance. I will go the rally like you and will hear the text there. There have always been surprises in his speeches and I believe this one will be like that too. The biggest surprise for me will be to wake up in the morning and see that this government has been replaced.” Aram Sargsyan believes the speech of the ANC leader will not contain anything against the positions of the ANC political parties. “The ANC is holding sessions of the political board every week and Ter-Petrosyan knows about those discussions. He knows the situation there and the opinions of the political powers and he does not do anything to raise conflicts with the standpoints of those powers,” said Aram Sargsyan.
However, it turns out Levon Ter-Petrosyan has discussed his speech with the president of ANC member Motherland and Honor party Garnik Margaryan. “Yes I know about it. When I heard about this project and agreed with that, but still it is not the time to estimate. If there were disagreements, I told him about that. The political board heard everyone’s opinion,” said Mr. Margaryan. As he is aware of Ter-Petrosyan’s speech we asked him what would be a surprise in his speech. “There are several provisions there which will bring changes. For example, the opinions that we are going toward extraordinary elections are baseless. Second, being an established institution the ANC has its chapters which have worked on economic, social, educational, scientific and healthcare projects. No institution has discussed such projects,” said Margaryan. In answer to our observation that the ANC’s big goal is not the development of scientific projects but change of the government he said, “Now we are continuing that and everything will be built on it; it is our primary goal. The speech will include concrete steps and policies leading to the change of the government. The social issues are very hard in the country, we have very big demographic problem as well, we have failed in politics, now these things have come together and will explode inside the country and result in the change of the government.”
Concerning these issues Lyudmila Sargsyan says, “All the speeches of Ter-Petrosyan are surprising for us and logically we can understand what he is going to speak about. Unfortunately there are a lot of topics like that. I think that it is logical to speak of new things because Armenia is in a very bad situation now. It will be very hard for us to survive as an independent country because we are strongly dependent on the super-states. There will be turnover in the psychology of people because the disappointment resulting from the ruling power has brought them to a tragic situation, when the citizens of Armenia don’t see any good future in their country and they leave from their country. If the society does not change and realize that it can’t go on this way, the country will be lost.” She said that she had not discussed the speech either but assured that if there were any provisions they would disagree with, it would not be the time to stop on them. “We are united over a very serious goal and the small and minor disagreements are not serious. I think all the parties should stand above their narrow ideological concepts and ambitions, and unite with the political power which can mobilize the society. Now our goal is to bring up the society to make it mature for changing the government through democratic means.”