The National Unity and the new oppositional Rule of Law parties have declared a temporary ceasefire. During a parliamentary briefing, Artashes Geghamyan announced that his party is no longer going to respond to any accusations on the part of Rule of Law. Rule of Law member Gagik Mkheyan said the same for Rule of Law. Based on the results of the debate, which took a couple of days, both parties managed to offend one another and eliminate each other in the political field. Now it seems as though National Unity is doing all it can to start conflicts with the Armenian Democratic Party (ADP) and the Armenian National Movement (ANM). However, judging from ADP leader Stepan Demirchyan’s speech during the National Assembly briefings, the ADP has decided not to get mixed up in all that. The ANM understand what it means to start a conflict and doesn’t want to listen to what Artashes Geghamyan has to say.
During the recent debate between Arthur Baghdasaryan and Artashes Geghamyan, the leader of National Unity said that he had talked with Karen Demirchyan in his home before the 1998 presidential elections. Based on that discussion, Karen Demirchyan had come to the conclusion that it would be better for him to become prime minister and have Kocharyan as president due to the fact that it is better to trust Robert Kocharyan in resolving the Karabagh conflict.
“He was certain that he would become prime minister and that Robert Kocharyan would help resolve the Karabagh conflict, taking into consideration the extreme conditions,” said A. Geghamyan.
When Karen Demirchyan had put up his candidacy, Geghamyan was really surprised. So, it turns out that Geghamyan blames Karen Demirchyan for making a shady transaction with Kocharyan. This truly hurt the ADP and Karen Demirchyan’s family and they denied what Geghamyan said. However, seeing that he was running out of time, A. Geghamyan tried convincing journalists that he had meant something else when talking about Karen Demirchyan. He had even brought the taping and drew the journalists’ attention to this part of the speech. But we didn’t understand just what he meant. The only thing we understood was that journalists were the ones who tried to start a conflict between Demirchyan and Geghamyan, but as leader of National Unity said, they will never be able to do that. Everything became clear when leader of ADP Stepan Demirchyan made his speech during the parliamentary briefing.
“I was present during their discussion. Karen Demirchyan had suggested that the National Unity party leader become head of the campaign. Geghamyan rejected the offer. If there was such an offer, this means that a decision had been made beforehand to be nominated as president. That was his right-to defend, or not to defend, be nominated and defend another candidate. It was his right, but Geghamyan doesn’t have the right to tell lies, especially all that concerns Karen Demirchyan. I can tolerate many things, but there is a certain limit. I must say that Karen Demirchyan never needed someone to defend him because the people were on his side and it was clear as to who was going to win during the elections from the start of the campaign,” said Stepan Demirchyan about the Geghamyan-Demirchyan dialogue back in 1998. In closing, the ADP president said that he would no longer answer to questions and warned everyone present not to expect another debate between National Unity and the ADP. Stepan Demirchyan had probably learned from Arthur Baghdasaryan’s mistake and didn’t get too emotional. He decided not to get into a debate with Artashes Geghamyan because he would put his reputation down and Geghamyan’s at the same time. This especially benefits the authorities because they want to motivate the opposition to eliminate itself and cause some alarm in Armenia’s internal political life under the conditions of the Karabagh conflict.
Besides the abovementioned, A. Geghamyan challenged the ANM to a debate. Geghamyan tried to scare the people using ANM and warned them that the criminal authorities are trying to come back to power.
“Some political parties, which are alienated from the authorities, now want to create an illusion that the opposition is out of the political field, so that people will believe them and really think that only the ANM can substitute Kocharyan’s administration,” warned Geghamyan about the dangers.
Geghamyan also announced that the well-known Gelabi institute and the U.S. international/state institute have surveyed 1200 citizens of the 18 regions of Armenia. In response to one of the survey questions as to who the people see as a leader of Armenia, according to Geghamyan, 57% said that they saw Geghamyan as leader, 41% saw all the political figures as leaders in one and only one percent was undecided. As for the question as to who they don’t want to see a leader in any field, 8% said Artashes Geghamyan. This is why the authorities have started a huge fight against the 57% leader.
“They haven’t called me to a debate to discuss the outlooks for Armenia until 2020, they are not calling me to a debate to discuss the possible cosmopolitan developments, the financial and economic developments, but rather they are moving me to negotiations where I can’t compete against them. They are moving me down to just being Geghamyan,” protested Artashes Geghamyan.