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Ter-Petrosyan Raffles All The Options

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  • Ter-Petrosyan Raffles All The Options

    TER-PETROSYAN RAFFLES ALL THE OPTIONS
    Armen Tsatouryan

    Hayots Ashkharh Daily
    Oct 10 2007
    Armenia

    Ex-President Ter-Petrosyan's recent activeness has raised a certain
    hue-and-cry among the politicians as well as in society.

    This, however, is not a manifestation of a specific political demand;
    it is rather a natural interest in a person who has already earned
    his place in history.

    With the purpose of transforming the positive tendencies of such
    interest into a serious political asset and "putting it into practice",
    the ex-President is trying to form 3 camps on the political arena.

    The first is the army of his own proponents, and we believe that the
    fact of its being limited is obvious to him too.

    The second is the issue of defining the non-interferers and neutrals,
    as this is a tool aiming to restrict the greater chances of the ruling
    authority and its candidate.

    And as to the third, rival camp, Ter-Petrosyan's attitude towards
    it still remains on the plane of a psychological war, since this
    is an attempt of stirring anxiety over the "permanent rotations"
    and breaking his unity.

    We believe the principal goal of such kind of tactics is the solution
    of a third problem, because Levon Ter-Petrosyan's current maneuvers do
    not promise serious results in case of relying upon the other options.

    The reason is obvious. Of the 3 camps mentioned above, the first
    consists only of Mr. Ter-Petrrosyan's party members and other factions
    that tend to join him in case he proposes his candidacy.

    Among them are "Republic" party, the Armenian Democratic Party and
    others. And this is rather insufficient.

    As to the second camp, ARFD and "Rule of Law" are the first parties
    Mr. Ter-Petrosyan wishes to see in it. And the meetings which have
    been organized or are going to be organized by them aim to demonstrate
    the ex-President's broad-mindedness.

    As regards third camp which consists of the RPA and "Prosperous
    Armenia", futile attempts are being made to isolate them from the
    political arena, to reveal and sharpen internal discordances based
    on the theoretical assumption the state machinery and parties have a
    great number of human resources who have been there since the times
    Mr. Ter-Petrosyan was in power.

    However, the attempts of hurting this "main target" have not yet
    produced any result.

    What chances of maneuvers can the ex-President have during the coming
    months, in view of this formula that divides the political arena
    into three parts? It is clear that in view of the limited political
    resources it is impossible to think of Mr. Ter-Petrosyan's serious role
    in the presidential elections. The extra-Parliamentary parties which
    are willing to become his political support need help themselves. So,
    Mr. Ter-Petrosyan's "political reanimation" is necessary for the
    leaders of those parties and not for the ex-President. Realizing
    this fact, Ter-Petrosyan is trying to undertake the next step: to
    form a new, non-partisan format, required for initiating a new and
    wide public-political movement. For that purpose, the first method he
    applied was the attempt of gaining favor among the businessmen and
    rejecting the term "oligarch", a labeling that is often associated
    with those people's names. And he did that through his September 21
    speech. His next steps are related to the efforts of recruiting the
    influential representatives of intelligentsia. The result in this
    case was strictly limited too.

    Since the overwhelming majority of society has an inert attitude
    towards the "rotations" initiated by Mr. Ter-Petrosyan, there only
    remains the option of referring to the past in order to make movement
    develop. The recent attempts of reanimating "Karabakh" committee come
    to prove that by initiating a series of meetings Mr. Ter-Petrosyan
    has not managed to reveal a "critical mass" with the help of which it
    might be possible to create something. Therefore, there remains the
    third option: the trumpet and the fists clenched for the liberation
    of Karabakh in 1988. The only difference is that this time those
    fists will be directed at "liberating" Armenia from Karabakh.

    However, by and large each of those activists is now engaged in
    introducing himself/herself, and it is only Vazgen Manoukyan that
    remains on the political arena with his small team. Therefore,
    Mr. Ter-Petrpsyan's efforts promise strictly limited results in this
    respect too.

    Moreover, if the political reanimation of "Karabakh" committee pursues
    a goal to "liberate" Armenia from Karabakh, the new "advent" of the
    veterans may become the negation of "Union", the task to which they
    committed themselves in 1988. And this kind of primitive self-negation
    by "Karabakh" committee cannot provide chances for initiating a wide
    public-political movement.

    In such situation, the only factor is the possible flaws of the ruling
    authority or the theoretical assumption that certain discordances
    might emerge inside it. And Levon Ter-Petrosyan's team is now making
    persistent efforts in that direction. We believe this is the real
    in-depth goal continuously experimented by Mr. Ter-Petrosyan within the
    past one-month period with the help of diverse political technologies.

    Therefore, there is no need to be surprised by the fact that Levon
    Ter-Petrosyan invents some original step once a week, because the
    diversity and consistency of those steps can, at least for some period
    of time, make the public direct its attention to the political team
    which has built its calculations based upon the possibility of the
    rival's defeat or the expected flaws and omissions.

    And when all the options of various rotations are ruled out,
    Ter-Petrosyan is sure to confess that his nomination has no public
    demand in Armenia, and he will desperately stake on another candidate.
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