Andranik Mihranyan, an Armenian political scientist from Moscow, who is the head of the national strategy commission of Globalization and development of the public chamber of Russia, is in Armenia now. Several days ago he met with the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan at Babken Araktsyan’s “Armat” organization and in several days he will meet with prime minister Serzh Sargsyan. Yesterday the political scientist was hosted by the national Press club. Most of the questions concerned the upcoming presidential elections and the possibility of repeating the scenario of change of government as expected in Russia. According to him, Putin has 70-80% reputation among the Russian people and has a reputation of “the nation’s father” and it will be wrong on his part to leave everything and go away. Mr. Mihranyan believes that the next president of Russia will be the one advocated by Putin, and this person he thinks is the existing prime minister of Russia, Viktor Zubkov. Mr. Mihranyan thinks it is impossible that the Armenian president may become prime minister following the example of Putin since he thinks the situation is totally different in Armenia. According to him, maybe Kocharyan had such opportunity one year ago, but after the parliamentary elections he does not have that opportunity any more. He says that if the PA or ARF had the positions that the ARP has, it might happen, however, in the current conditions it is not possible. According to Mr. Mihranyan, after the recent parliamentary elections everyone in Armenia knows the name of the candidate. However, he said he could not guess what Kocharyan might do after the elections. “During the recent years our meetings were held together with other people too, for this reason I didn’t have an opportunity to analyze his intentions more. I don’t think anyone has analyzed his intentions that way since he is a very close person and I don’t think that there are even a couple of persons, who may say that he shares with information with them. Besides that as far as I know him he is very straight and is not flexible in that light, and is very self-confident to act in other roles too,” said the political scientist concerning the existing president. Concerning the presidential elections Mr. Mihranyan said that the intrigue of these elections is the appearance of Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s factor. “I respect the first president very much. He placed a great role in the process of formation of our state. I was very proud to see that the Armenian political culture was confident so much that the change of the government in 1998 did not bring to destabilization, military and other actions,” he said and added that it was reached due to the first president as he had the opportunity to do things, which could have tragic end. Mr. Mihranyan thinks that Ter-Petrosyan is a serious and wise person and cannot do “slight things”. He thinks that after analyzing everything the first president will make a final decision. “I think that he has both moral and political right to run,” said A. Mihranyan. In his words, if the first president runs, in fact there will be a referendum and people will make a choice between “those years and the government of those times, and these recent years and the government of the new times”. “Our people should compare and see what kind of achievements and failures there have been during these times and which of these powers can show the way of development to the future,” said A. Mihranyan and added, “I would be happy if Levon Ter-Petrosyan were a real political factor, who would contribute to the development of our national values, I would be happy, if these elections were not separating elections like those of 96 and 98, I wish these elections were aimed to uniting everyone. Anyway, Ter-Petrosyan’s meeting with Vazgen Manukyan, ARF was very interesting and surprising for me. I would be happy if he met with ARP as well”.
The political scientist thinks that even though based on the recent parliamentary elections it is seen that Serzh Sargsyan’s resources are prevailing and there are political powers, which would not like to change the existing balance and will back prime minister Serzh Sargsyan during the presidential elections, but “if Levon Ter-Petrosyan manages to unite all the opposition powers, become a joint candidate”, the situation will change to the extent that the competition “will be really very interesting”.
Answering to questions concerning support from outside he said that he “could not say that Serzh Sargsyan was surely the candidate of Russia and that Levon Ter-Petrosyan was surely the candidate of Washington”. He thinks that the world will have some influence on the processes, but the main powers to decide the outcome will be the internal factors and powers. Mr. Mihranyan said that he didn’t know what the Russian authorities would think about the nomination of the first president during the presidential elections and added that “if the existing authorities are keeping their arrangements to some extent, there is no sense to change them”.