The reason is not what the first president says to the gathered public or how he says it but the fact how purposefully he makes use of the meetings and how reasonably constructed his speeches are. In both cases he, in the tactical aspect, has been exceeding his main opponent – the ruling authorities.

Ter-Petrossian takes advantage of each of the gatherings to respond to the opinions and comments on his previous speeches. At the first glance, it seems he responds to all the questions that have been piled up. Meanwhile, in reality, he has been responding to the weak and rather vulnerable accusations directed towards him and his times, skillfully avoiding the most essential questions. The strategic victory of the first president over the authorities is about the fact that avoiding remains unnoticed for everybody.

The syndrome of “dark and cold years” is, first of all, a strong weapon in the hands of Ter-Petrossian. Without any difficulty, he manages to prove that the main reason has been about the huge means allotted for the Karabakh liberation movement. It is virtually impossible to conduct any debates on this level because it is impossible to draw a line between the presented subjective and objective reasons. Ter-Petrossian is very well aware of it and is able to easily retort to any criticism, bringing all the necessary arguments. Moreover, he even manages to turn that syndrome into one of his trump cards.

“It may sound weird but I’m happy that most of our people considers the years 1992-1994 to be the years of “cold and dark,” which means that they did not feel the horrors of war… I am sure that the further generations will evaluate the years of “cold and dark” as years of heroic struggle and triumphant war,” the first president says. Naturally, after such a comment, it is not difficult at all for him to apologize for those years, which lots of people were expecting.

His response to the accusations concerning “the roots of the present faulty regime” is even more noteworthy. Ter-Petrossian has been trying to prove that there is no “genetic” connection between the current and former authorities, and that everybody is responsible for what he has done. In this matter as well, the first president’s ideas are completely logical and invulnerable… But they are invulnerable only in the aspect of the periods separated by the power change of various political figures in 1998.

If we compare Ter-Petrossian’s first and second speeches at the gatherings, we will see that the contradictions of his ideas have been carried to the point of absurdity. If there is no “genetic” connection, how did it come that Serzh Sargsyan was occupying the most responsible positions in 1993-1998. If, for example, the minister of internal affairs of the country could have been not responsible, doesn’t it mean that the frame of the real responsible persons has been much narrower than it is stipulated by the state governing system.

In general, the manpower policy conducted by the first president and the former authorities is a matter of separate discussion. Ter-Petrossian declares that during the power change in 1998 all the key high-ranking official of the AAM authorities resigned with him. And it is presented as “an unprecedented political and moral behavior.” Meanwhile, nothing is being said about the fact that, within one night, most part of Republic bloc left the drowning AAM boat like rats, intruding into the frames of the coming authorities. Doesn’t it demonstrate that “the anti-culture virus” of corrupting and depraving the political field has actually emerged, perhaps reluctantly, from the “labs” of the AAM authorities.

What was the purpose of creating the satellite parties of AAM that, being deprived of any ideological basis, actually captured the whole political field, forming the basis of ruining not only the parliament but also the political field on the whole.

On the other hand, Ter-Petrossian claims that, during his ruling years, there were “corrupt ministers, official misuses” but there were separate phenomena and were not systematized and organized like now.

First of all, it would be interesting to know when he has learnt about the corrupt ministers and official misuses – was it during his ruling, or later, at a retrospective glance? If it was during his ruling years, why haven’t they been accountable for that? And if he learnt it after his resignation, doesn’t it mean that his manpower policy has been radically wrong?

On the other hand, by condemning “group” crimes”, doesn’t he attempt to justify the separate corrupt ministers of his ruling time and that phenomenon in general?

In general, Levon Ter-Petrossian’s all speeches contain the idea that they have not committed any crimes because, if they had committed them, these authorities would have long ago “executed them by hanging at this podium.” It seems to be quite a logic conclusion, especially if we consider the long-lasting but futile investigation of “the fuel oil case.” However, this idea very delicately veils the circumstance that the political career of many representatives of the current authorities has started since the epoch of the former authorities, and, understandingly, they might be not interested in the issue of “rummaging too deeply,” particularly if we take into consideration RA president Robert Kocharyan’s famous expression “witch-hunting will not happen.”

It is interesting why Levon Ter-Petrossian has been circumventing the fact that Vano Siradeghyan’s arrest has changed, on the condition of not leaving the republic, as a result of the signature of two distinguished AAM representatives. Why doesn’t the RA first president condemn the criminal negligence of those two representatives of his party, resulting in the mysterious disappearance of Siradeghyan.

There is something more noteworthy: Ter-Petrossian’s evaluation on the elections that had happened before 1998: “All the elections conducted in Armenia since 1995 have been, mildly speaking, controversial and sensation-causing. Apart from subjective moments – arbitrariness, electoral forgeries, etc – it also has an objective reason…”

From 1995 to 1998, two national elections – parliamentary and presidential – have taken place. The question is, why doesn’t he cover the “subjective moments” he has mentioned if we take into consideration that they are apparent facts of organized crimes? And if they have happened during his ruling years, doesn’t it mean he has been playing by double standards, in one case criticizing the crime organized by “plutocracy,” and in another case justifying the electoral forgeries that have happened on his permission, or by his ignorance, at best?

In this context, his evaluation of the political opposition of the epoch of former authorities sounds absolutely strange, as in “opposition used to be powerful political counterbalance, the peak of its influence being the movement headed by Vazgen Manukyan in 1996.” In general, Ter-Petrossian’s biggest omission happened on that very level, which pre-determined the deformation of the whole further electoral culture in the republic.

The president, considering the opposition to be a powerful counterbalance and having lost his popularity, could have accepted the real results of the presidential elections in 1996 (especially if he accepts that they were conducted with violations and electoral forgeries) and left his position as a really winning president. Only in that case could he urge the whole political field to keep the elections free from forgeries and, in general, get the moral right to criticize any such expressions in the future. Actually, the first RA president accepts that the ruin of the electoral system has started during his ruling years and under his actual supervision. If that is true, where is the guarantee that the system will recover in case Ter-Petrossian is elected and takes up the presidential office? This matter is being skillfully neglected by Ter-Petrossian.

The first president has been denying the comments on the AMM revanchism. Nothing else could be expected.

However, we should look straight at the facts. If it’s not about revanchism, why is he talking about his willingness to rule just for three years, and then leave the area of politics for good? It simply means, instead of dismissing the current authorities, to bring people around him to power. No prospective, policy-related issues can be solved if the task is only about the actual intention of dismissing the current authorities. Meanwhile, people were expecting that Ter-Petrossian, as an extremely pragmatic and farsighted politician, would present a vision of solving prospective issues, a platform that would change Armenia’s road to progress to a qualitatively another level. In such conditions, it would be at least naïveté to expect any strategic program from him – you can expect that a politician talking about three years of ruling will present only one or two months’ or, perhaps, two or three years’ realistic program aiming at dismissing the current authorities and “cleaning the Augean stables.” Apart from that, by putting that idea into circulation, Ter-Petrossian closes the ways of moving the electoral struggle into ideological and platform-related levels.

On the other hand, it should also be taken into consideration that the idea on three-year ruling is a lure thrown to the oppositional field, with the purpose of joining the oppositional resources around him and, first of all, solving a tactical issue. Ter-Petrossian just did not notice that the tactical trick will become a serious obstacle in prospect, in a strategic aspect. Besides, Ter-Petrossian did not explain the following: what if the leaders of all the political forces he had mentioned heeded his appeal and he became a common candidate? How did he envision the solution of Nagorno-Karabakh problem in the course of just three years? If it is possible, then why did he announce at the meeting at Armenia-Marriot hotel that he could not envision yet how that problem could be solved?

These are the questions that not only fail to find answers in the former president’s consecutive speeches but become more acute. Meanwhile, it is obvious that, without responding to them, Ter-Petrossian will not be able to solve any serious issue in the political field, regardless of the fact that, with his logical and substantiated speeches, he manages to evoke huge response and to form an alternative pole for the authorities.

GOR ABRAHAMYAN