From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Mon Jun 10 2002 - 10:16:59 EDT
Armenian agency condemns authorities for "ostrich" approach to key problems
The Armenian news agency Noyan Tapan believes that the current authorities
are either failing to resolve or keeping mum on a number of key issues
which need to be tackled for the sake of Armenia's future. These include
evading giving answers on the key issues of Karabakh, recognition of the
Armenian genocide and Armenian-Turkish relations, pretending that the
problem of corruption is under control, failing to solve serious criminal
cases with a possible political motive and not getting to the bottom of
what really happened with the shootings in the Armenian parliament on 27
October 1999. The following is the text of a David Petrosyan report by
Armenian news agency Noyan Tapan entitled "Test questions":
Without doubt the central political event of last week was Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan's participation in a Yerevan-Moscow-Los Angeles
TV bridge (which periodically included both Gyumri and Stepanakert). This
event, which aroused genuine interest among the two biggest parts of the
Armenian Diaspora, was supposed to provide answers to a number of questions
of concern to all Armenians. However, the president was evasive and
practically avoided answering the two main political questions: about how
the Karabakh settlement process is going and the prospects for resolution
of the conflict and about Armenian-Turkish relations and the prospects for
recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Kocharyan had
the chance to prepare his answers to these two questions in advance and
provide the more detailed explanations which were undoubtedly expected of
him as it was not hard to guess that they would be asked. However,
unfortunately this did not happen.
The main problem for the president was the question about corruption in
Armenia posed by Richard Mushegyan from Los Angeles. This question was like
the series of "test questions" put to people who are undergoing a
lie-detector test. After a series of questions like this, the main
parameters for the lie detector are set so it is possible to gauge when
someone is lying, and when they are telling the truth. Without doubt the
Diaspora is sufficiently well-informed as to the real state of affairs in
Armenia regarding corruption (and not only corruption) rather than
accepting the propaganda. Its representatives were clearly interested to
see how prepared the president was to discuss this major problem in an open
and unbiased way. Unfortunately, Kocharyan preferred to stick to the main
slogan of the PR campaign, which amounts to everything in Armenia being OK.
How this viewpoint goes down with the Diaspora, only time will tell. The
Diaspora, with a few isolated exceptions, has shown that it is not prepared
to make massive investments in the historical homeland until there are
reliable legal guarantees and security, stable rules of the game and
finally and most importantly, an end to the monstrous scale of corruption
that is eating away at Armenian society and the state. All this undoubtedly
reduces Robert Kocharyan's chances of achieving real and not just
lofty-sounding successes at the second Armenia-Diaspora forum.
Other "test questions" were posed last week by ex-Speaker of the Armenian
parliament Babken Ararktsyan (1991-1998) at his fairly interesting news
conference. The main "test question" was: how does the former parliamentary
speaker today assess the events of 26 September 1996, when opposition
deputies were beaten up in the chamber? His response was very long and
touched on events that happened prior to this event. (We should recall that
on 25 September 1996, opposition supporters who were not happy with the
vote-counting at the presidential elections burst into the National
Assembly building, which is where the Central Electoral Commission was
located. As a result of these clashes, the speaker and deputy speaker of
parliament at the time, Babken Ararktsyan and Ara Saakyan were badly beaten
up. On the following day, during the session of parliament, pro-government
deputies beat up opposition representatives.) However, six years later the
former speaker of parliament did not want to condemn the force used against
his opponents at the time. In this context, Ararktsyan's generally fair
criticisms of the current authorities for mass violations of the law and
human rights appeared unconvincing. Although, to be fair it should be said
that we found a number of ideas and some analysis presented by the
ex-speaker fairly interesting. Of these we would single out the following:
- political circles close to ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosyan have their
presidential candidate, but are ready to support another candidate at the
forthcoming elections, including someone from the current opposition, if
that person has a chance of beating President Robert Kocharyan;
- these same political circles think that colossal sums of money, by
Armenian standards, will be used in the forthcoming elections (local
government, presidential and parliamentary). This money will have direct
links to the shadow economy and criminal elements;
- in general the current Russian leadership would like to see President
Robert Kocharyan remain in his post, and Moscow will use its influence as
far as possible to maintain the current status quo in Armenia;
- the West (Ararktsyan here was talking specifically about the policy of the
USA and the European Union) is no longer interested in cooperation with
Armenia and shows a clear preference for cooperation with Azerbaijan and
Georgia.
The other important answer to a hypothetical "test question" on the fight
against crime in Armenia was the statement the prosecutor-general made
about suspending the investigation into the criminal case concerning the
murder of the former head of the Armenian prime minister's control service,
prime ministerial advisor Gagik Pogosyan (who was killed eight months ago -
11 September 2001 - in a grenade explosion at the front door of his flat).
This was done on the grounds that the identity of the criminal is not
known. Translating this from "bureaucratic language" into ordinary
language, what it means is not that they simply cannot find the criminal
(that happens), but that they WILL NO LONGER BOTHER LOOKING FOR HIM! We
would once more like to draw to your attention that this was no "ordinary
corpse", but an advisor to the prime minister at the time. This well-meant
but ill-advised act by the prosecutor's office will not have done Robert
Kocharyan any favours ahead of the Armenia-Diaspora forum. The opposition
press has repeatedly expressed the view that Pogosyan had a lot of
compromising material on top officials.
The head of the parliamentary commission on state and legal issues, Viktor
Dallakyan, answered the final "test question" last week, at the 27 October
terrorist act [shootings in the Armenian parliament] trial. During his
speech in court as one of the victims of this act, he not only analysed the
crime and raised new and interesting facts, but publicly put forward the
theory of a sixth participant in the terrorist act, who killed the deputy
Armenak Armenakyan.
We should recall that this version of events was put forward about a year
ago by the journalist V. Gukasyan in a pamphlet he published about the 27
October 1999 terrorist act in the National Assembly. A substantial amount
of journalistic research was carried out on the prosecution evidence
presented to the court. The author of this investigation, V. Gukasyan,
suffered all sorts of attacks and persecution by the pro-authorities press
and "unidentified people" (a bus and a leather workshop belonging to him
were torched).
This version of a sixth participant in the terrorist act was repeatedly put
forward at the temporary parliamentary commission to investigate violations
of the law during the investigation into the 27 October terrorist act case.
And now we have Dallakyan's court statement. Unfortunately, this statement
was made on the same day as the Yerevan-Moscow-Los Angeles TV bridge, so it
did not attract the attention it deserved from the Armenian public. The
primary reason for this is the absence of electronic media (primarily TV
companies) which express any alternative to the pro-presidential view
regarding what is happening in the country.
All that has been set out above represents only a partial reflection of the
whole host of very difficult problems for Armenia which have either been
left unresolved for a long time by the current "party of power", or about
which they simply opt to keep quiet. There could be serious political
consequences if the current political course, which some local observers
call "the ostrich policy", is continued, not only for Kocharyan's
administration and the country, but for Armenians everywhere.
Source: Noyan Tapan news agency, Yerevan, in Russian 1042 gmt 7 Jun 02
BBC Mon TCU 090602 aed
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