PARTIES OF THE RULING COALITION, COUPLED WITH DASHNAKTSUTYUN, ARE SURREPTITIOUSLY PREPARING FOR EARLY ELECTION
David Stepanyan
ArmInfo
2010-09-09 15:59:00
Interview with Chairman of the Board of Armenian National Movement
oppositional party Aram Manukyan
Mr. Manukyan, people in Armenia keep rumoring about early parliamentary
elections. Are there prerequisites for this?
There are three prerequisites for such a situation.
Unprecedented intensification of external pressure on our authorities
is the main prerequisite and, appearingly, the circle keeps on
converging. All the documents and resolutions passed with respect
to Armenia, as well as the Europeans’ attitude in general create an
unfavourable background for the republic.
Almost all the international structures – US Department of State,
all the three OSCE MG cochairmen, European Union, two UN resolutions,
four resolutions of the European Parliament and statements by other big
countries gave a negative estimate to Armenia during 2 years. Besides,
there are negative conclusions by international organizations engaged
in estimation of democratic processes.
Armenia’s regress in general makes up 30 points and the country takes
the 120th-130th place among 200 countries of the world, while the
aggregate of similar indicators before 1998 varied within 50-80 points.
All these external levers of pressure bear hard on Armenia, moreover,
in an unbiased manner, since the republic does not fulfill its
commitments and does not play according to the game rules, by which
it joined one or another international organization. This is the
primary factor which promotes holding of early election.
Do internal factors matter here?
The domestic political situation is a weighty factor which creates
background for holding of the extraordinary elections in Armenia,
it will simply force the authorities to make this step.
I mean the political prisoners, regress of democracy, awful indices
of corruption in the country, monopolization of economy as well as
gradual destruction of free economic market. The macro-economical
indices of Armenia are also sad. There are few countries in the world,
the external debt of which is about 50% of GDP and the import of
which surpasses export by 4-5 times.
Such indices are peculiar to the countries going down the drain. Along
with these factors there is inflation, legal exposure of citizens
and other factors which promote outflow of population from Armenia.
All this allows the intellectual part of our society to make a
conclusion about incapability of the incumbent authorities and aspire
to get rid of them.
And what about the Republican Party? Do they also want mid-term
elections?
The only political force not striving for extraordinary elections in
Armenia are the Republicans, because during extraordinary elections
their levers of influence on the voting process and their results
will be insignificantly lower than during regular elections.
During regular elections, authorities resort to every possible method,
even to criminal actions, to rig elections, whereas it is much easier
to control the mechanism of extraordinary elections. In addition,
during extraordinary elections, the authorities will fail to falsify
the results and the psychological aura of such elections will be
absolutely different. It is strange, but extraordinary elections are
pledge of their fair and free conduct, though extraordinary elections
do not make us happy because they often lead to serious shocks.
Are early elections expedient considering that quite little time is
left till 2012?
Yes, there are. 2 years is not a short period. In addition, time is
not the only matter.
As for me, I do not seek to come to power, I just strive for
sovereignty, independence, real political predictability of our
country. Today we have none of these important elements of statehood.
To become a normal and desirable partner for other countries we need
these elements as the breath of one’s nostrils, because they ensure
trust and stability. Today all these parameters are at the zero level
in Armenia.
The key element and task of any state is its security. Have we obtained
guarantees of security after the visit of the Russian President and
the prolongation of the agreement 1995?
In general, partnership between Armenia and Russia any be just
welcomed. At the same time I have an extremely negative attitude to
some steps of our authorities, as we shall not manage to correct what
they are doing today. Obviously, it is not enough to them not to be
legitimate, and they take long-term steps for determination of the
future of the new generation, though they do not have such a right.
As a result of wabbling from the USA and the West to Russia and
Turkey and back, from NATO to CSTO the Armenian authorities have
found themselves in a situation when all these parties fell into
disenchantment with Armenia as an unpredictable and windy partner.
In other words, this situation is the result of Mr. Oskanyan’s
complementary policy?
Complementary policy of the Armenian authorities led the republic
to unipolarity.
This is quite natural considering that the authorities carried out
a complementary policy at a tinhorn racket level trying to cheat the
Russians and sell out to the Americans, and then cheat the Americans
and fly to the Russians’ arms. Something similar happened in case of
fraudful games of our authorities with Turkey, as a result of which we
have achieved nothing. A country appeared, as a result of all these
wiggles, which claimed of the readiness to solve Armenia’s problems,
as Armenians themselves turned out to be unable to solve them.
It turned out necessary for Russia considering the importance
of Armenia’s geostrategic position. This is the only result of
complementarism in Armenian.
Lets put aside the so-called legitimacy of our authorities and answer
the question how bad this might be for us considering that the primary
task of Armenia is to ensure the security of Nagorno-Karabakh?
Of course, extension of the functions and terms of Russian servicemen
staying in Armenia is not bad for us. But we should not forget that
national security first of all depends on the fact how much this or
that country has been integrated in various security systems.
At present our authorities have done everything possible for the West,
the USA in particular, to step back.
As a result of it, I expect similar stepping back by Armenia in the
matter of democracy, the grant programmes, etc. That is to say, the
West has lost hope to turn Armenia into a serious partner, and we have
transferred from the multi-pole system to the single-pole one. This
reduces the potential of Armenia to maneuver, though promotes security
enhancing. Undoubtedly, we are for the strategic union with Russia,
but this union should be equal.
Till 2003 Russia paid for renting of the territory for its military
base, but thanks to Robert Kocharyan’s efforts since 2003 all these
expenses devolted upon the shoulders of Armenian tax payers.
If you show me at least one country which being a host party pays for
maintaining of the base of a foreign state, I will take my words back.
Yes, but if Armenia decides to strengthen its alliance with Russia it
will have to give up the complementarism game. Isn’t this a positive
outcome?
Armenia’s foreign policy must be multi-level but open at the same time.
Trying to deceive our partners, we pickle a rod for our own back,
for honesty is the best pledge of success in foreign policy for
the countries like Armenia. Something similar happened under Levon
Ter-Petrosyan when Yeltsin knew what to wait from Armenia and the
West knew that Armenia’s security is ensured, first of all, by
Russia’s presence.
We must observe the rules of the game to wage a multi-level foreign
policy. In the meantime, Armenia has found itself under influence of
just one of the global poles
From: A. Papazian