Recently president Kocharyan met with the students of the Yerevan State University and came up with a long speech dedicated to the presidential election, post-election processes and Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Robert Kocharyan also answered the questions proposed by the students. By the way, the president also told the students not to focus on political issues only and ask other questions as well. The questions mostly concerned the political environment in the country, the Karabakh conflict settlement process and the economic, education, social programs of the Armenian government. The president answered to questions concerning his future plans as well. Herein we are presenting the president’s opening speech and some questions and answers.
“It is my last meeting with the students with the president’s status. I also understand that it is a very important and responsible political period in the country, but I have decided not to postpone this meeting. Even more, I think that this situation will make our meeting more important and sharp. As always, we don’t have any limitations to the agenda and no limitations to your questions. I hope we will have a free conversation. The presidential election has finished already and the results have been announced, but before the election a lot of work had been done to get prepared. We have taken into consideration all the advises of international and mainly European institutions concerning the law and organizing elections. We gave refused to accept only one recommendation, which concerns finger inking. The reasoning why we have not accepted that recommendation is that the intelligentsia will not agree with it and a part of the citizens will not vote, thus we will lose a part of our voter turnout. We have made a decision to invite international observers and over 600 international observers represented international institutions in Armenia during the election process. During the entire process all the candidates, political teams had the opportunity to tell their opinions to the public and in that connection the laws on media have been preserved during the campaign period. No one had any limitations to organize mass demonstrations. During this period there haven’t been any conflicts with the police. We have also received the estimations of election monitoring missions, which are mainly positive. There can’t be fully fair elections; there can be violations and the important thing is that how the state is reacting to violations, or what type of violations there are; whether there are organized and centralized violations or no. If the state is reacting immediately, it means that the state bodies want to organize free and fair elections. You can get information about all the violations on the web pages of the public general prosecutor’s office and the police. These web pages are updated every day to inform the public what the state bodies are doing to work those shortcomings out and punish the falsifiers. The election has finished, the prime minister has won and he has announced that he is ready to collaborate with all political powers. An active process has started and some powers have already announced about their readiness to cooperate with him. My estimation is that the new cooperation format will be formed during the upcoming two-three days. However, there are people and candidates, at this moment a candidate, who don’t agree with the results of the election. Thus, two processes have started: a normal process of appealing the outcome of the election and a process of presenting that complaint to the broad public. We could predict such pattern since we had such a tradition in Armenia. I have been elected twice and won in the second rounds. The candidates, who had the second places have never agreed with the outcomes. As far as I know the outcome of the 96 election was not accepted either, and the party that lost the electoral competition did not fight their ambitions to congratulate and accept the results. ”This situation was predictable as two weeks prior to the voting day one of the candidates announced that he had already won the election. It is natural that after such announcement it would be impossible to recognize the outcome of the election and it is natural that they would appeal the results and organize public demonstrations.
What will happen later? Definitely everyone wants to know it. I think there are four possible options. First, the demonstrations may actively continue and try to involve new people. However, our prediction is that the more they continue the demonstrations and the more and actively they try to keep those people in the square, the more those people will be disappointed. We have seen that experience in the past; it is a psychological factor, people are living a psychological stress and later can’t forgive the ones who are guilty in that. It is just a deadlock and will be driven against those people first of all who are trying to use that tool. Second, as a result of cynicism they may try to do the same thing as they did in 1996 and attack the state bodies. The organizers will appear out of the law at once and will be responsible for everything to the full extent permitted by the law. The police and law-enforcement bodies have all the possibilities to protect the civil order. However, after that many people on the scene will have to spend much time in prisons and will have enough time to analyze their past and mistakes they have made. Certainly, this is the worst option. Third, they may thank those people for their support and ask them go home, thus keeping their influence on them and their image as a sharp opposition power and get prepared for the next election. I think it is a possible and clever scenario, but in order to do this the situation should be evaluated calmly. The fourth scenario and option is a quiet option, which is that they may thank their supporters for their help, congratulate the new president, asking him not to apply the law to the strictest extent on the violators and go to do some scientific work. We are ready for all these four solutions, but we think that the best choices are the third and fourth options. What other options do we have? First, we can wait and see when this theatre performance will finish itself. It is impossible to compare this situation with 89-90s. In that period we were a part of the collapsing empire, but now our country is an independent state. Those people who have tried to attack buildings have had bigger failures. The second option is to clean up the square with the help of the police. I think it will be a great help for those people who are disoriented and are in that square being in great psychological feelings. One day it may become boring and we may say that it is enough already. Of course we wish it could end itself and there were no need to apply power pressure. By the way, the police makes power pressure only in cases when people are trying to show resistance to the police. By the way, the rhetoric of the speakers on their scenes can be a very good example for your students of psychology. However, I think that they are entertaining people very well, it is very interesting, and the most interesting thing is that they are feeding them. At least there are some positive things in it”.
After the president’s opening speech the students asked many questions, some of which can be found herein.
– The president of Azerbaijan often announces that the best solution for the Karabakh conflict is recovering the status-quo of 1988. In this context what do you think about the core opposition’s announcements that the Karabakh conflict should be solved as soon as possible? Does this mean returning territories without getting anything instead and importing a feeling of loosing within the society?
– I don’t know anything about the announcements concerning returning to the status of 1988, more correctly they are saying the following: let’s return to the maximum autonomy status that we have had. It is impossible to create the status-quo of 1988 since the Soviet Union does not exist, it has collapsed, and it is clear that we can’t return to that option. I don’t think that we should prolong the solution of the problem and that we should have a specific purpose to solve that problem by all means as soon as possible. Both these options are unacceptable. We should have our specific approaches and figure out what we really want, and thus if it is impossible to accomplish that within one year, do it within one year, and if in two years, do that in two years… In terms of principal issues we should not take the role of the loser. Such announcements will have a bad influence on the stances of the mediator-countries. An imagination may be created that a big part of the Armenian society is ready for compromises. Our country is involved in active negotiations, and we are conducting surveys or finding out by other means whether different suggestions are acceptable by the society or no. During the recent ten years we have significantly improved our positions near the negotiations table. During these ten years there has been no word that Karabakh may be in the territory of Azerbaijan. And if tomorrow such thing is discussed near the negotiations table, it will mean that it is the achievement of this campaign.
– Mr. president is it possible that the police may apply power pressure on the demonstration participants?
– I said in the beginning that if people show resistance to the police when carrying out their duties, the people who are resisting to the orders of the police can be punished. If they resist to the police, the law will help to solve the problem. Application of power is possible only as a result if the people don’t obey the legal demands of the police. The organizers have not applied to the corresponding bodies to get a legal permission for organizing that rally as an organization should bear responsibility for that event, but no one wants to be responsible for calling that crowd together. If they applied, they would get permission for sure. However, they don’t want to work legally.
– Do you expect any more betrayal on the part of state officials?
– Definitely it is not a good word to use as those people who have been dismissed from their duties have not sworn an oath to me. Betrayers can be those people who have sworn an oath to me. No, I am not expecting. The problem is that those people have been in close relations with Ter-Petrosyan or his team. The opposition consists of these people now; they are relatives. Definitely this is the reason why they decided to endorse him. However, I know that many of them are not happy for their decision. There is a factor which is unpleasant to me: the opposition has announced that the police, security bodies and the army have joined them. Also, he happily announced that the state system had been cracked. What are you cracking? Whom are you cracking? What are you applauding for? Why? You were an Ambassador and you could work. What is the purpose? The purpose is to enable his teammates to take out a paper and read loudly that some other people have joined them as well. They have just ruined the professional careers of those people as the law defines that if they are in office they can’t do such things. By the way, we haven’t fired any of their relatives since 1998. Shahen Karamanukyan’s wife was normally working, even she was promoted. Now Vano Siradeghyan’s wife is a library director and works well. It would be shameful to harass those people.
– Are you going to be involved in politics in the future as well? Can you say that you are leaving your position with a good faith that everything will be fine? What will you do in the future?
– Yes, I am leaving with a belief that everything will be fine. A lot of good things have been done during these 10 years. Once I joked in the public and said that when a person gets off a very old car and rides in a Mercedes for a couple of days, it seems to him that he has been riding in that luxurious car during all his life. And if he sits in an old car again, he will not forget during all his life that he has driven a Mercedes. Now we have got used to this situation and have forgotten what was going on before. In 1998 when I used to go to Sevan often, I could hardly see 3-4 cars on my way and there were no people having a rest there. You could not differ the working hours from the non-working hours when walking in the streets of Yerevan. We have forgotten that. Look back! When guests were coming from abroad there were no good restaurants to take those people to. Have you forgotten that? You are young and maybe you don’t remember it well. I think your masters and lecturers do remember. The country has developed much and we will print a brochure about the achievements of these ten years. I don’t know what I will do after leaving my position. Recently Russian president Vladimir Putin asked me during our meeting in Sochi what I was going to do. Do you see that both we are in almost the same situation? I said that definitely I would have a rest for a while, but in three months I may wake up in the morning and complain that the life is not good without going to work and making decisions. On the other hand, I may wake up and ask myself what I was doing before if there could be such a quiet and good life. I don’t know, let’s see, it will be clear in several months.