In an interview with "MediaMax" agency, the second president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan touched upon the debate over leader of the Prosperous Armenia party Gagik Tsarukyan’s statement, which has been most intensively discussed in the past two weeks.
-During the past several weeks the most intensively discussed topic was the statement of the chairman of the Prosperous Armenia party Gagik Tsaukyan, according to which we claimed that if you had the wish you could easily chair the Republican Party or establish your own party. But you didn’t wish to do so. Could you please explain your logic at the time?
-Yes, I have really established a political party and didn’t tend to lead any of the existing ones. Back in that time the acting constitution gave enough powers to the president, by which he could easily conduct its policies in close cooperation with the parliamentary parties without direct involvement in the activity of any power. Moreover, it also gave certain privileges to the president because he could stand atop the party competition and play the role of the arbiter during the tension of relations between parties. In the field of political competition it is not possible to be a player and an arbiter. The constitutional amendments seriously politicized the executive branch of power by increasing the role of parties in the formation of those. Because according to the new constitution I had less than a year to work in the same conditions as a president I decided not to change the format of my participation in political processes but I started to pay more attention to the internal situation of political parties and especially the RPA. According to an agreement with Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan and then Serzh Sargsyan, I gave several successful heads of executive bodies advice to join the Republican Party of Armenia in order to reinforce the latter’s cadre potential and in fact, most of them are currently part of the party’s administrative bodies. This is a natural political process, which only strengthening the Republican Party. They were very thrilled about that in the RPA. The pre-electoral list of the Republican Party of Armenia was agreed with me in 2003 and 2007 and that was a high indicator of cooperation between the president and the party with the largest faction in parliament. It allowed me to preside without thinking about the party’s leadership. By the way, that cooperation became the guarantee for success in the social-economic development that was registered during those years. This also comes to speak about the pragmatism of all the participants of that process. At the time, I think few people had doubts that as president, I was capable of not only forming, but heading (formally and informally) the majority in parliament. I simply chose another model of cooperation with the parliament and the political parties which, at the time, was more efficient and gave the president the opportunity to focus on the presidency and maintain an ample field for maneuvers in domestic affairs. The nature of the debate showed that unfortunately, some political figures have a very short-term memory. Cooperation became the guarantee for success in the social-economic development that was registered during those years. But all this is already history and it’s not important any more who could do what. For me the need for fair political competition in the upcoming parliamentary elections is an imperative.