There were some disagreements between leader of the Armenian Liberal Progressive Party, Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, and the political party council secretary, Edward Antinyan, after the May 12 National Assembly elections. Hovhannisyan closed the party office and announced that he was going to open a new office in a different location. In the meantime, Edward Antinyan had opened the former office of the ALPP, which is currently working without a president.
– Why did you reopen the party office located on Abovyan street when the leader of the party, Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, announced that he was going to open a new one in a different location within two weeks. Could this be an attempt to change rule within the party?
– First of all, I have never sat in the big chair after reopening the party. I still occupy my work office. Besides that, the party currently has debts to pay off, which were supposed to be paid by the leader of ALPP. However, the latter got up and left, and played with the reputation of the party and mine as well. The reopening of the office goes to show that that is not the case, that the political party just got up and left and is not fulfilling its responsibilities. The party is not one person. There are people in that party who also have authority.
– H. Hovhannisyan had said that he was no longer satisfied with the office conditions and that is why he had decided to get out of there. Why didn’t you wait for him to open a new one?
– A political party is not a seasonal business for us to sit and wait for the leader to open whenever he sees fit. As far as the satisfaction of the office conditions is concerned, of course, the conditions of our office could no longer satisfy Hovhannisyan because he had run out of patience. Besides that, you usually choose a territory and then move, and not take the office property to Haykaz’s studio in the village of Arinj and then bring it back to central Yerevan. Is there any logic to that? Today marks two weeks since his announcement, but there is still no new location. There was a time when he used to lie with the perspectives ahead – when the moment came, some circumstances changed and he justified himself by the force-majeure (acts of God) situations of the country and the world. Now he has consumed all of his resources and nobody is giving him deadlines any longer. He has turned into a sprinting liar – he tells a lie and then gets caught. The problem is that Hovhannisyan had not announced that he was closing the office. He left the office secretly and ceased the party’s activities. Perhaps he could explain what forced him to close the office that fast and take the property belonging to his partisans. What brain does he have left for him to remember whose property he is taking? Of course, we did manage to find out where the property is and are looking for ways to get it back to the office.
– Why are you so certain that he stole the property? Perhaps he really did take it and is going to bring it back?
– The chairman may own and do whatever he wants with the property, but not sell it. If we don’t know where the items are, how else can we describe it?
– Don’t you at least have a chair and table?
– All we have is what the tenant left us and my personal items. He even took the property of our colleagues. This is a matter of principle for me. He has to prove with documents that there was a political party council session where it was decided that the ALPP should not participate in the parliamentary elections. But he realized that he couldn’t prove anything, gathered the documents, and left. When disagreements are no longer secret, the situation turns into that of a wrestling match, when before the match both sides announce that they are going to rip each other apart. In the end, there is only one winner. This is the next round. As long as you still haven’t read in the papers that Hovhannisyan has resigned from the position of chairman, the subject is still not closed.
– If H. Hovhannisyan resigns in this round, what are you going to do in the next round? How long do you plan on discrediting the chairman of your party?
– When weeds are growing in the field, don’t think that people will notice their presence when you start fighting against it – the worth of the field will come down. Get to the roots immediately and then the field will get back its good name. But if you waste your time hiding the fact that the weeds are present, then you will be forced to leave the field the way it is. Then the worth of the field will decrease as well as the owner of the field. The political field is in the public eye, and you can’t hide the weeds. I have spent a lot of effort in this, and I will not let anybody else get fooled. I want to be the last fool. If it were someone else before me who had done that, then I wouldn’t be in this situation. Finally, there has to be someone out there to put an end to these lies. The oppositionists keep saying that the authorities are stuck to their chairs and don’t want to step down; they say that for them the chair means welfare, great financial means and pleasure. What is the chair of the chairman of the political party? Why are they so attached to it and don’t separate from each other even after everything has failed. After the National Assembly elections, and months before the presidential elections, everybody is in his place in the Armenian political field and nobody thought about resigning. Being on the same level of well being and democracy as the authorities, the opposition doesn’t have the chance to win, because in that case it will not deserve the support of the public. Whom and for what should the people fight? It is going to be the same thing no matter who comes to power. Everybody sees who is trying to take on big roles in the talks between the opposition. It is no longer time for lies, and now it is time to face the truth, which is the most difficult thing. Just like the government doesn’t want to admit that it is wrong for the situation of the country and take on the responsibility for its actions, the opposition doesn’t want to confess about the unproductiveness of the struggle against the authorities and learn from its lessons. The government has enclosed itself like the three-headed water dragon and doesn’t let anybody else near, while the attitude of some oppositionists has turned them into a multi-headed dragon. You are always forced to fight against the oppositionists to get to the water; the oppositionists who can’t cope with the fact that they are no longer the leaders, and no matter how much they lose and get crushed, they still try to find a better fight for their parties with a different configuration – against the opposition. We need a new approach if we really want to beat the authorities. Take a look and see how many showed their real faces during these elections, not to mention that the real worth of some was revealed. Particularly in our case, in a matter of days, Hovhannisyan went from talking about huge, international issues to being a small, local phony.
– You called the factual chairman of your party a thief, liar, a phony. What if he comes back? How are you going to work together?
– His political career is over because there is not one politician in Armenia who will express the desire to work with that political “rotten meat”. He doesn’t have the qualities of the commander of a submarine, to take on the responsibility of making the right decision by evaluating the risks and dangers he faces. True to his nature, and by waiting for a miracle to happen every day, everything will be put off and in the end he will sink down to the bottom of the ocean.
– Do you have the traits of a submarine commander?
– First of all, I didn’t say that if he is unable to fulfill his responsibilities then I will definitely do it. Others can do it too. Secondly, my traits should not be evident when I become the commander, rather now when there is a question as to whether I will be able to save the submarine from sinking. I can say one thing for sure: I am not going to go along with that lie. Hovhannisyan should not rely on the fact that he will get out of the situation and will save himself, because in order for me to be able to not reach the bottom of the ocean, I must first get rid of the ballast, in other words, free myself from Hovhannisyan.
– But H. Hovhannisyan is the chairman of the party and he can come at any given time and remove you from the party.
– The assembly will decide that, and not Hovhannisyan. I used to think that after Karp Khachvankyan’s death, there was no other person who could play the role of the liar Theodore in the play “Liar Needed”. But these last events instilled hope that Hovhannisyan will exceed him, because Karp Khachvankyan, no matter how talented he was, still had to get into the part to play. But Hovhannisyan doesn’t need to get into the part. He is already liar Theodore, and all he has to do is come out on stage.
P.S. We were not able to receive the comments of Hovhannes Hovhannisyan concerning this issue. We are ready to publish his viewpoint in our next edition.