During a recent opposition meeting former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan discussed issues concerning privatization, namely what has been privatized by the existing authorities. By the way, it doesn’t matter that some of the mentioned processes have started during his tenure.
Obviously he says that the existing ones are bad, and they are good. He didn’t say what processes have started during his tenure and that he didn’t have sufficient political will to solve certain issues, as a result of which many competent politicians have been forced out of the political field. Thus, he doesn’t describe the change of authorities in 1998 with the fact that the elections of 1996 were violated, but saying that the political party of peace is leaving (he), and the political power of war is coming (the existing authorities). Otherwise it means that he left so that not to let a civic war take place. Certainly, Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s speech differs from the others with its good words and beautiful definitions. However, the expectations of people are not limited with such nice words. Neither they start with such words. We understand that he has to use beautiful words to influence on the public opinion and empower his potential followers. During the Karabakh movement people were discussing why Vazgen Manukyan did not come out from the movement group to be the leader, who has good intellectual merits, but Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who has good rhetorical skills. The answer was that he had good rhetorical speech and could attract people easily. Now he wants to use that opportunity as a priority in comparison with the other candidates. Furthermore, during his tenure of 7 years and 8 months as the president he didn’t even meet ordinary village citizens, but now he even does it. The experts of campaign strategies advise him that he should meet people and make contact with them. He does it well. When Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s supporters who were announcing about the time of his rally and giving fliers to people, as well as two chief-editors of newspapers were taken to police station, the facts and the authorities helped his campaign too much. The next step had been decided too; there were people who managed to bet that on the same day their candidate would go to the police station to protect and stand for his followers. “He wouldn’t ever go there, but now he will,” many people said. The names of Michael Hayrapetyan and Petros Makeyan don’t say much… However, two chief-editors of two newspapers were arrested. It was necessary to go there and stand for those people. Levon Ter-Petrosyan is not the first president of democratic Poland, Lekh Valensa. However, there are situations, which look alike. The latter recently lost elections and left politics forever. However, he did such thing in 1995 too, when he lost the elections with a difference of 300.000 votes. Later his party, which didn’t have much power in Poland at that time, could hardly get 1,1% of votes. “The pre-election slogan of Lekh Valensa was the following: “White is white, and black is black”. The pragmatic Polish people preferred the slogan of Kvanevski, which was the following: “Poland should joint the Euro Union by all means”. Some time later Valensa returned to politics, but his rating was about zero. In 2006 he tried to return to politics and announced, “People, who were struggling for the independence of Poland, cannot agree with everything that is happening now. We haven’t struggled for people such as Kachinski”, he said about the existing president. However, the fact was that the Polish people had already given an opportunity to struggle and to lead the people’s movement, but he failed. On January 29, 1998, the speaker of the parliament of that time, Babken Araktsyan, gave an estimate to ANM and said, “As a political party, which bears responsibility for the present and future development of the country…” During an interview Vano Siradeghyan said concerning the separation of the movement and conflicts between the leaders that Vazgen Manukyan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan have the same problem, which is that their leadership stereotype is Asian, “I mean that they govern not through the political system, but through palace intrigues and replacing people”.
One month prior to the elections of 1996 they understood that they would fail. “Even some people thought that such poor campaign might be conducted only in case if the president did not want to be elected, but in such case there was a very good political way to do, which was that he could just refuse to nominate his candidacy and help the opponent to win. In 1996 they presented those failures as a fact that Levon Ter-Petrosyan had got tired and that he was not capable of working any more. When the results of the elections were being announced at night, in 1996, all we were sitting in the ANM central headquarter building, as I remember Robert Kocharyan, Leonard Petrosyan and Arkadi Ghukasyan and we were receiving that information. At that time some people were taking information from the ANM building to the supporters of Vazgen Manukyan being at the square and told them that people in the party were confused. Robert Kocharyan was the first person to notice that. In that bad environment, I remember, I called Vazgen Sargsyan to the neighboring room, we talked for about 3-4 minutes, where I asked, “Is Levon ready to go to the second round?” Vazgen said “No, he is not ready” and also said that we had to return back as people could suspect and might worry that we were speaking in a neighboring room. Thus, in fact there was no second round. We, being the government, thought that the elite people of Karabakh would support us and we were quieter. After those events the president fell in depression for about three months. He wanted both Vazgen Sargsyan and me to resign. In a word, it seemed that he didn’t want anything generally… But later we saw that during 97 Levon Ter-Petrosyan was preparing a scenario how to leave. Kocharyan was strengthening his power and authority, but in fact he was getting ready. The former president, in fact gave up with the issue of Karabakh in 97 in his speech entitled “Peace or war”. Vano Siradeghyan concluded his speech with the following: “After all the mentioned things the person who benefited most was Levon Ter-Petrosyan; he stayed in the history as a unique leader of country, who has liberated territories and have not given lands. Robert Kocharyan appeared in the safest situation (it is what he wanted), who, definitely, may give those lands”. Certainly, this last prediction did not happen; Kocharyan hasn’t made Ter-Petrosyan’s wish come true, just the settlement of the issue was prolonged so much that in that period Azerbaijan strengthened its positions and army due to the incomes received from oil. Robert Kocharyan’s foreign policy has driven Karabakh to deadlock, which is a very heavy load for the next president and people. Now Ter-Petrosyan’s team considers the role of campaign technologies and Mass Media more important than before. This point doesn’t concern the inner situation only. Lekh Valensa made the same calculations too, but he didn’t count on the factor of the people’s trust, which was not like before.