In what could be an attempt to placate opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan, President Serzh Sargsyan yesterday ordered Armenian law-enforcement authorities to investigate the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan with greater vigor. President Serzh Sargsyan touched upon the process of the criminal cases, connected with the March 1 events. “I have stated for many times and now state once again that there are many expectations and first of all I speak about the March 1 events. I expect a new power and specific drive in revealing the above-mentioned cases. I am aware of all the issues and objective problems we all had: I mean the law enforcement bodies. Maybe no one knows those problems better. But once again I must state that the significance of the issue is great for our state, our society and for avoiding various types of speculations. This is an essential circumstance as well. For me this is a very important issue and my claim is that you again and in detail touch upon even those circumstances, where nothing can be new for you. Try to find ways of solving those cases,” President Serzh Sargsyan said. The president says though there were some achievements during the reforms of the judicial-legal reforms and significant work was undertaken in the recent period, the issue of ensuring the system’s efficiency cannot be considered fully solved. “The study of the legal practice shows that in case of our legislation’s non-clear regulations the enforcement of our legislation is very contradictory. I do not say that this started in the recent year or several months ago. This defect, in general, has always existed. But we must fight against it very seriously, especially after the effected changes. Today we just ought to invest this practice into all the judicial instances. In our reality, unfortunately, such decisions are not some extraordinary phenomena,” the president said. The conduct of a new and more objective inquiry into the worst street violence in Armenia’s history is one of Ter-Petrosyan’s three key preconditions for starting a “dialogue” with the Sargsyan administration. It is evident that this statement is first of all addressed to the Armenian National Congress, the leader of which Levon Ter-Petrosyan among the three demands had brought up the demand of objective investigation of the March 1 events during his last rally. Moreover, this demand was formulated pretty interestingly – “official guarantee for the investigation of March 1 events…” Yesterday’s statement of Serzh Sargsyan was in fact not a guarantee but a “strict guarantee,” which once again comes to prove the ANC-government agreement and dialog. The next step of the chess game is to take the ANC and it will become known in a week during the April 28th rally.
