– Marine, the ones, who express negative opinions about the ANC and especially the ones, who dare to call the ANC “outdated opposition” as you did and offer to establish a new opposition, are considered pro-government “mines” or “envoys” within the opposition. So aren’t you scared of this prospect? Don’t you have fear that you may be blamed of defragmenting the ANC?
– To be frank, I haven’t heard any talks about me being a “mine” within the Congress. I am mostly accused of being “perplexed” and in the attempts of perplexing others. And I, unlike many others, just say what I think. During the past three and a half years, by regularly speaking to the media, I have gained a big number of readers and in this mass of readers I value the ones, who are sincere and express sincere opinions and my texts make these people think. Why am I saying this? Because when I started to blame the ANC by warning that the ANC is taking the movement to a dead-end there were people, who’d come to me and say, “Marine, don’t write sad things, we need stimulation and inspiration. Why don’t you do so as in the past?” But encouragement that is built on deception is very dangerous. Now this is the perplexity and bewilderment. These people – part of my readers, in fact wanted me to lie to them. But I will lie to neither myself nor my readers. If I have made a mistake I will say I have been mistaken and will try to correct it by moving forward.
– It seemed you were one of the strongest loyalists of the ANC and whatever the leader of the ANC says should be indisputable truth for you. Would you tell us what specifically made you disappointed?
– First of all, I have never believed in indisputable truths or people who never make mistakes. I have never thought that Ter-Petrosyan is a man who does not make mistakes. I just consider him a high caliber politician. Do you remember the hopeless situation following the parliamentary elections in 2007? After Ter-Petrosyan’s speech at the Marriott hotel announcing about his return to politics I was inspired and I thought that due to this decision Armenia would go out of the situation of political apathy. And I was not mistaken as following that statement the society and political environment became very active. What is more important, I thought that due to Ter-Petrosyan’s involvement in politics the political normal environment would be recovered in Armenia. Because even his political opponents would agree that he is a politician but not a criminal or oligarch. That is the reason why I embraced Ter-Petrosyan’s slogan of destructing the criminal system of cleptocracy and replacing it with the real political system, without which Armenia would never develop. Of course, I was familiar with the opinion that he was the one who established that criminal and oligarchic system. I also knew that some part of that opinion was true. However, I thought that a smart person like him had ten years to think about that and he would have recognized his mistakes. And I thought that he would speak about that and would apologize for the events in 96. He did not apologize, I was disappointed about that but I did not estimate the meaning of that fact well. I thought it might have been a result of pragmatic calculations because usually during elections candidates brag about their positive sides but not speak of their negative sides. But I was mistaken because the reason is different as Ter-Petrosyan thinks he is a man who never makes mistakes. We remember how the Ter-Petrosyan’s article entitled “War or peace? Time to become serious” originated a crisis in Armenia and became a reason of the first president’s resignation. The main meaning of that article was the idea that the more we are late to make compromises and resolve the conflict of Karabakh, the worse it will be for us. After the silence of ten years and choosing a good moment for returning to politics Ter-Petrosyan first of all raised the notion of fighting against the cleptocracy, gave hope to hundreds of thousands people, recovered his own image in the society due to it, later again he found the best time and turned back to his old idea by announcing that the change of the power will not give anything to us because Armenia cannot develop as far as it has not made peace with Azerbaijan. It seems that he is not the one who two years ago was saying that the change of the power was the only thing to save Armenia, it seems that people were not killed on the way to that mission, there were no political prisoners and thousands of people did not sacrifice what they had. There are people who say that this characteristic of Ter-Petrosyan, i.e. the fact that he stays very loyal to the things he says once is a strong character of following his principles. I have another opinion about that. I call it egoism because at this point the desire to prove that he was right ten year ago is more important than the destiny of all the people who believe in you and Armenia in general.
– Why didn’t you criticize before and make a call to found new opposition, for example on March 1, 2008, when Levon Ter-Petrosyan failed to come to the monument of Myasnikyan and prevent the tragic events, or when Ter-Petrosyan announced an open offer to cooperate with the government?
– I was not at the monument of Myasnikyan on March 1 as I was in hospital to be operated on. I remember that time; I had a TV set in my room and the price of watching TV was 100 drams for one hour, thus I was paying for watching total lie. I don’t think it would be fair to join the critics against the opposition when all the opposition powers were doing their best to criticize the opposition. I stayed at the hospital quite long, and when I went out of the hospital, I met people and understood that their souls had not been broken. In summer the rallies started again and the movement was developing fast. And an unexpected thing happened; Ter-Petrosyan broke down the movement, which was in the middle of fast development in September 2008. Due to Gull’s visit to Armenia the opposition cancelled their planned rallies twice, after which they announced that due to geopolitical changes the rallies would be stopped for some time. I remember that day very well; I remember what was happening to the people who had gathered at the Matenadaran. All they were in psychological shock. Since that day the ANC stopped being a factual opposition as the movement was going down. The settlement and development of the Armenian-Azeri and Armenian-Turkish relations was announced priority, and in that issue Ter-Petrosyan welcomed Serzh Sargsyan’s policy, and, as he said for several times, did not want to prevent those things from happening. In fact the cooperation with the government, which depended on Ter-Petrosyan, exists now as the opposition has been dissolved. As for the proposal to make a “national consent government”, which Ter-Petrosyan proposed during the rally of March 1, 2009, I have written about it in my article entitled “state of emergency”, where I wrote that it means that the people have been cheated again and they need a new leader. I have written about the shameful story concerning Yeghiazar Ayntapetsi and said that before making a proposal of legitimizing Serzh Sargsyan’s power, the opposition leader had to ask the ANC members first as I strongly believe that many people like me would not agree with that.
– According to certain analysis, Ter-Petrosyan’s political platform is not aimed at the change of the government, but preventing the change of the power and being an obstacle for Robert Kocharyan’s return to power. Also, during the upcoming elections Levon Ter-Petrosyan will make an alliance with Serzh Sargsyan, as it happened with Vazgen Sargsyan and Karen Demirchyan in 1998. What would you say about this?
– I don’t think that Kocharyan’s return to politics is realistic and the ANC believe in it, that is why they don’t concentrate on Serzh, who is the incumbent president, and criticize Robert Kocharyan instead of him. The problem is that if you are saying that you are an opposition, you have to criticize someone. In fact the ANC has stopped criticizing Serzh Sargsyan because the inner affairs are not so important as the foreign affairs, and the incumbent government’s foreign policy corresponds with the standpoints of the ANC. Even if Ter-Petrosyan is criticizing this policy, he is not doing it as an opponent but a critical follower. In a word, Ter-Petrosyan wants Serzh Sargsyan not to give up on the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation process and make compromises concerning Karabakh to continue that process. Concerning the possibility of cooperation between Serzh Sargsyan and Ter-Petrosyan, i.e. the RPA and ANC during the upcoming elections, it is not clear to me. However, nothing can be excluded in politics.
– You wrote the following in your article entitled “the new opposition’s structure”: “…The new opposition should not gather around one leader because the reason of the loss of the movement in 2008 was the fact of having one leader.” Do you really think that the movement of 2008 has lost? The ANC is going to raise a new wave of rallies starting from September to change the power. Don’t you believe such announcements?
– It is clear to everyone that the goal of changing the power is taken out of the ANC’s agenda. The movement of changing the power through rapid actions in the fall of 2008 was failed by Levon Ter-Petrosyan, and the ANC was looking forward to serious changes in the issue of the Karabakh conflict settlement. During one year they were keeping people in a position to wait and see what will happen; they were asking them to see what will happen, but indeed nothing happened. When they saw that nothing was happening, they spoke of cracks in the government and claimed that these cracks would become bigger and the power would collapse. Now they even don’t speak about this and they only speak of long-term things, which may some may result in the change of the power. Now it is clear to everyone that it is not serious and now the ANC’s goal for this period is to take a couple of seats in the parliament during the upcoming elections. It is worth mentioning that the ANC and the movement of 2008 are not the same thing to me. The movement is a spontaneous thing and contains a lot of opportunities, only some of which may come true. The continuation of the movement of 2008 was the ANC, which is an institution like a pyramid, in which the rows on the bottom are formally free, but in fact do not decide anything. The reason why the movement was failed was the decision to be involved in the ANC. For me the loss of the movement is a very bad loss, which I cannot ever accept. The opposition I am speaking about should be a political power which is the implementation of the opportunities which were failed in 2008. To me the most important thing in the movement of 2008 was the belief of people to their own powers. This belief should not be allowed to go away; it should not be replaced with disappointment. Recently Levin Zurabyan said that no opposition power can have a chance of victory because even the Congress, which was so large and massive, did not reach a victory, and the other powers cannot gather more people than they did. But the problem is not in mobilizing many people. When a lot of people gather around one person, it is enough that this person makes a wrong decision or gets tired, the other hundreds of thousands people are becoming useless. I have seen it with my eyes; it is impossible to imagine something worse than that. The repetition of this precedent should be excluded; the new opposition should gather not around a person but idea. It is the idea of new liberalism, which will give a new impulse of development both to the economy and the society of Armenia. The central value of liberalism is the human. The main resource of Armenia is the human too. If we succeed in using this resource, we will have the Armenia we are dreaming of.