While in Armenia almost all the political-public circles are speaking about the necessity of starting a dialog between the opposition and the government (to note that these conversations haven’t given any results yet) one of the Russian newspapers Novie Izvestiya has launched such a “dialog”.
Last week this newspaper printed an interview with the four members of the Armenian political coalition RPA chairman Serzh Sargsyan, Legal State chairman Artur Baghdasaryan, Prosperous Armenia leader Gagik Tsarukyan and the ARF Supreme Body representative Armen Rustamyan. By reminding that last week it offered information about the government representatives in the last edition the Novie Izvestiya printed the interview with the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Before the interview the newspaper writes, “The situation in Armenia continues to be in the center of the international community attention. The House of Representatives of the US is going to hold hearings about this issue.” In the opinion of the human rights watch of the Congress, the Helsinki committee states that this situation in Armenia brought it to a serious political crisis. And the interview of Ter-Petrosyan starts with the estimation of the pre-election and post-election periods of Armenia. “What happened on February 19 cannot be called elections in any way. Dozens of people, which showed civil activity, are taken to the police and National Security Service every day and threatened they will be dismissed. They damage their business. If you ask what I am going to do, I will reply – I will form certain public opinion so that not to recognize this power. We shall use all possible legal means for that," Ter-Petrosyan said. “The mass rallies, which followed the elections, came to prove that people don’t recognize the election outcome either. On that day when Serzh Sargsyan’s supporters joined us the number of the protesters reached 300-400 thousand. The government realized that in this environment the Constitutional Court may have made an unfavorable verdict for them. They should have changed the environment and thus provoked the situation by dispersing the people in morning from the Liberty Square,” said Ter-Petrosyan. In answer to the question about the current situation in Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan said: “First let me mention that there are over 150 political detainees in Armenia. On April 9 with the blessing of the international community and first of all the European organizations Armenia got a criminal, dictatorial regime which, to put it mildly, does not enjoy the confidence of people. I don’t know another country-member of the Council of Europe, where there are political prisoners. Almost all my agents, all the leaders of any elections headquarters were arrested,” he added by saying that the heads of villages, where he had victory during elections are being fired. “If you ask what I am going to do, I will reply – I will form certain public opinion so that not to recognize this power. We shall use all possible legal means for that," he said. By estimating the reaction of the international organizations about the situation in Armenia and elections Ter-Petrosyan said that these organizations are only trying to justify their activity. “Those are merely bureaucratic organizations and I mean their staffs. The staff has its own logic of existence and functioning. There you have retired diplomats and young careerists, who cannot say that everything is bad in the countries, which are in their responsibility. In that case, they would be asked what they had been doing for so long. Europe already feels this and many criticizing articles were published. If in past mainly the governments were against those organizations now the society and the opposition opposes them, which is very dangerous for them. People complain in Armenia, in Georgia and Azerbaijan,” confirmed Ter-Petrosyan. In the end the reporter asked him about his professional activity. “You are a famous scientist. Do you keep in touch with your Russian colleagues?” “Yes of course, either directly or thought mediation,” answered the first president.