What did and what did not do Levon Ter-Petrosyan

26/10/2008 Tadevos KHACHATRYAN

The second entry of Levon Ter-Petrosyan into politics a year ago strangely enough politicized the inter-political situation of Armenia in the literal meaning of my word. I mean the Dashnak turned into Dashnak, communist to communist, NDU member to NDU member and thus brought them back to their ideological grounds.

It means these people went back to their actual origins to oppose Levon Ter-Petrosyan. In the political sense indeed it was a good thing because the political life was also ideologically formed, which always creates alternatives and enables a way out of any situation. Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s entry first of all cured the political field. Therefore, he didn’t trample politics like his successor Kocharyan did but instead united them even against him. But that way the role and essence of political parties was raised. By doing that the first president brought an end to lie, forgery and various forms of coalitions, which were originally formed not for the sake of the country but for reaching certain goals and splitting the profit among several people. Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s entry also gave answer to question whether there is opposition in Armenia. He made the existence of the opposition real y annihilating the role of the fake oppositionists, who have formed the political field of Armenia. It means that Artashes Geghamyan turned to Artashes Geghamyan, Artur Baghdasaryan to Artur Baghdasaryan not an oppositionist. The first president stole their mask and made them opposition to the real opposition and not the government. This is the positive stuff that the first president fulfilled. But what was positive also had its negative impact. First of all he made the governmental forces more united. What did Ter-Petrosyan not do? First of all he didn’t reach the promised victory. The desperate ones, who were hoping that Ter-Petrosyan would change something became more desperate and will most probably keep packing their suitcases for migration. Because the opposition, which was formed near him was the only resource squeezed from political ruins. And perhaps there is the hazard that his movement may have the same destiny as Vazgen Manukyan in 1996, Stepan Demirchyan in 2003. And as I wrote in my previous article in the coming years there will hardly be such a force formed. In general there is a simple reality in the basis of Ter-Petrosyan’s ideas and judgments, which can be formed in the following way – politics is the art of possible and impossible and not understanding this means separating from political reality. His mind is constantly dual-structured. It is approximately similar to how Ter-Petrosyan’s article written during his resignation was entitled, “The moment of getting serious – war or peace?” In this case he is doing the same – continue the war or not. After the first article he resigned enabling the new government implement their programs and plans regarding the NKR conflict. Back in past as now he didn’t wished to hinder the government from resolving the conflict. By ceasing the activeness of the movement (even temporarily) he makes the same step to make the government serious and resolve what they had been supposed to do ten years ago. Let’s leave the cows alone but in the history of humanity there was only once that a human being changed his skin. That was Michael Jackson. But I heard he regretted about that. Now as before Ter-Petrosyan is making the same mistake by thinking that the incumbent government will do its best to take Armenia out of the created abstruse situation and resolve the NKR conflict. It is hard to persist now whether back in 98 the first president had sufficient resources (as now) to retain the power. However, the simple comparison makes it obvious that in Armenia the power was maintained by someone, who didn’t have resources of not to consider Vazgen Sargsyan’s groundless romanticism and splashing democracy, which if turned left would bring to totalitarian clan formation (just like what we had) and if turned to the right would bring to power the republicans, striving for fake democracy (just like what we have). And the step, which Ter-Petrosyan was keeping in secret by calling it a tactical move, leaves us an opportunity to predict and wait for the failure of the incumbent government to successfully resolve the NKR conflict and other political issues. This is his reserve option, which may even justify him by ignoring that both in the first and second case we already lost the opportunity of being an initiator.