Elections in Armenia

[Lernakan]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

Ter-Petrosian should be hung for treason, he is seperating the interests of Nagorno-Karabagh with that of Armenia, their interests coincide, again, Diaspora screwing over Armenia because they have their own self interests or projections of what the Armenia people should be. Apprently he wants to create another "rose revolution", place Armenian interests second to the interest of the United States and Europe, two entities that are and will work with Turks and Azeris in order to procure oil pipelines and alternatives to future Russian and Iranian Caspian oil monopoly.

I don't think there are many Armenians in the diaspora who support ter petrossian. I have not heard a single person say something positive about this traitor except for one frustated individual on this forum.

I have also spoken a lot with friends in Armenia and all of them said that it's impossible that ter petrosian wil get elected again. The overwhelming majority of the Armenians hate his guts.

[Armenian]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

We were actually discussing this topic with a bunch friends last night. I was the only person in the group not born in Armenia. Out of approximately 15 individuals there, only one supported Levon Ter Petrosian, the rest were strongly against him. Two (including me) thought LTP should be tried for treason and hanged in public. Some thought he should be exiled from the country, perhaps to Israel. And others said as long as he does not get involved in politics he should be left lone in isolation.

A little background on the people present. Every single one of the native Armenians present last night had come to the United States during the past 10-15 years. Every single one of them were highly educated professionals working within various fields NYC. Not one of them were pro-Kocharyan or pro-Sarkisyan. With the exception of one, they were all simply against LTP. And the single person that had kind words to say about LTP was from a "hairenadarts" family, as was LTP. As some of you may already know, these types of families never felt fully accepted in Armenia. Consequently, these people developed animosity and disdain towards the Armenian Republic and its native population and were amongst the first people to flee the country.

Anyway, a close friend of mine angrily said: until that "xxxitghen" came into the scene I was ready to vote for anyone except Serge Sarkisian. Now that Levon is in the race I will only vote for Sarkisian...

We came to the conclusion last night that there is a chance that the authorities in Yerevan made some kind of the deal with LTP. With LTP running in the presidential race next year there is no chance that Sarkisian won't be democratically elected. Like I had said in the past, LTP came make even the most corrupt politician in Armenia today look like an angel.

[Virgil]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

I don't think there are many Armenians in the diaspora who support ter petrossian. I have not heard a single person say something positive about this traitor except for one frustated individual on this forum.

I have also spoken a lot with friends in Armenia and all of them said that it's impossible that ter petrosian wil get elected again. The overwhelming majority of the Armenians hate his guts.

All I can say is that I would rather have a corrupt Armenian president than a president that bows down to foreign powers. My point is that there exists the ideology that the Diaspora organizations has some authority on the future of Armenia directly or indirectly the bottomline is that the Armenians in Armenia have this authority. I just hope no pro-western candidate wins, this is my greatest fear, that if a pro-western candidate wins they will crumble on the pressure of Europeans and Americans, these two entities have already sold out their people, they can not be trusted. Any nation that gives 30 billion dollars in military aid to Isreal on the premise of "self defense" and then refuses to provide its very own national citizens with some level of healthcare, is in my opinion, selling out American citizens. Europe is the same, Turks will overrun the place and then in a couple generatiosn the Turkish military will annex Europe, don't beleive its possilbe? Look at Cyprus and Kosovo, these Europeans and Americans are selling out their people.

This is my greatest fear, no on LTP, hang him, democratically or undemocratically elect Serge, I don't care what is attached to him, its better then working with the entities mentioned earlier. As you can see, I am not a fan of the greatest common denominator, just look at America, the media has turned everyone against each other, the people's rights have come second the needs of greedy corperations and special interest lobbies because the latter two entities have the capital to fund and skew public opinion, thus, pratically pissing on the idea of "for the people, by the people".

[Virgil]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

The advocates of nationalistic ideas turned down Ter-Petrosian at the very moment when he was preparing to sign a peace agreement with Azerbaijan about the occupied territories. Another reason for displacing Ter-Petrosian was his desire to establish friendly relations with Turkey." In the end of the article "Milliet" represented the brief biography of Levon Ter-Petrosian and noted that he speaks 10 foreign languages, including Turkish.

I agree, its a possiblity, bring up a horrible candidate to make others look good, I think its a good idea, as long as Serge wins.

[Armenian]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

Digging the Dirt: “News” of the week challenges LTP to answer lingering questions about his past

By Aris Ghazinyan, ArmeniaNow reporter

The political comeback of ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan as a possible contender in next year’s presidential election has brought in its wake some sensational news, which, however, hardly became a surprise for those in the know. The thing is that the policy advocated by the former ruling Armenian National Movement party (ANM) has always been shrouded in secrecy and this veil of secrecy yet has to be uncovered. Ter-Petrosyan will have to address his loyalist ANM party’s alleged involvement in the dramatic events in Yerevan in May 1990. The allegation was recently made by Sokrat Hovsepyan, a former prosecutor of the Prosecutor-General’s Office’s investigation department. Speaking about the tragic events of May 27, 1990 at the Yerevan railway station and in the capital’s southeastern suburb of Sovetashen resulting in dozens of victims among the local population and Soviet Army servicemen, he claimed that the investigation of the case back then had revealed those “actually responsible for the tragedy.” Hovsepyan then pointed his finger at the ANM’s leaders as authors of the provocation of clashes between the military and civilians.

(Whether an ex-president or a common citizen, it is fair to remember that pre-1991 investigations were conducted by the KGB – a body whose role as law enforcement was hardly distinguished from its service to Kremlin politics. Nor has much changed in that regard, though the same body is now called the National Security Service.)

“There was a suspicion in society from the very beginning that what happened on that day was one of the ANM provocations, however this theory has never been corroborated officially in the subsequent years despite investigations mainly conducted by journalists,” political analyst Levon Mikaelyan says in this regard. “And now a prosecutor makes a statement asserting that the case in fact had been disclosed and that the authors of the provocation were top ANM members led by Levon Ter-Petrosyan. The first president will probably have to answer this sensational statement.”

The second piece of information that drew public attention is perhaps directly connected with the first one. It revealed that 50-odd volumes of a notorious criminal case instituted in 1988 against the Karabakh Committee, of which Ter-Petrosyan was a leading member, had disappeared from the archives of the Prosecutor-General’s Office. It was also reported that prosecutors had launched an internal inquiry to look into the circumstances of the “mysterious” disappearance of the case. The inquiry had a quick ending, though. A few days after announcing the loss, Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepyan stated that the case was forwarded in 1996 to the then president Ter-Petrosyan and that the latter had signed a written undertaking to return it to the archives. Hovsepyan requested that Ter-Petrosyan return the case to where it had to be kept. The ANM first refused to admit the fact, but eventually the Soviet-era files were found in Ter-Petrosyan’s personal archives. The former president’s statement that this high-profile case was taken from the archives of the Prosecutor-General’s Office and transferred to him in connection with the plans to open a museum of the Karabakh movement in Yerevan seems unconvincing, especially if we take into consideration the fact that the transference took place immediately after the 1996 presidential election, in a very difficult period of modern Armenian history. Obviously, the first president will have to address this odd page of history as well.

“It seems the incident is over,” Mikaelyan notes. “But it is noteworthy that immediately after the case was transferred to the then president’s personal archives, a law ‘On state and service secret’ was adopted in 1997. Already then some fears and concerns were voiced over the faultiness of that piece of legislation that provided all grounds for the rulers (current or former) to be able to turn a secret of the state into a secret of the authorities, to change their and our common past at their discretion and, indeed, turn history into a pseudo-science. Probably, these are interrelated events.”

And finally the third news of the week is connected with the case of October 27, 1999, when a group of gunmen burst into the Armenian National Assembly and sprayed it with bullets, killing eight statesmen and senior officials, including the country’s prime minister and parliament speaker. Addressing a public rally in Yerevan on October 26 this year, Ter-Petrosyan said on this occasion: “The heinous crime of October 27 will always remain as a brand of shame on Armenian statehood, even though it can be partly removed by means of achieving a full disclosure of the case. Therefore, accomplishing this task will become one of the main obligations of Armenia’s future president, which is excluded if [Prime Minister] Serzh Sargsyan is elected president. “… The president prohibited the military prosecutor from making a speech in parliament and then discharged him from the case altogether, dismissed him from his position as prosecutor-general and appointed Aghvan Hovsepyan, a loyal servant of the regime, in his stead, exerted public pressure on the lawyers of the victims’ families, in particular calling one of them an ‘outcast’.”

The matter concerns Oleg Yunoshev, a member of the Moscow Guild of Lawyers who represented during the trial the interests of the brother of slain Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan. But the thing is that it was Levon Ter-Petrosyan whom the ‘outcast’ Oleg Yunoshev had accused of being involved in the terrorist attack. “Armenia’s former leadership led by ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan had involvement in the terrorist act in the parliament of Armenia,” Yunoshev, in particular, stated to Moscow journalists in June 2002. This sensational accusation was also mentioned during this week, and was expected to be answered by Ter-Petrosyan in a rally scheduled for today.

Source: http://armenianow.com/?action=viewAr...6&IID=&lng=eng

[Armenian]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

LEVON TER-PETROSIAN’S RETURN AND THE NEW RULES OF THE GAME

There is no need to give proofs that the return of the first president of Armenia will change the political developments in Armenia. Though the leading Republican Party tries to show that nothing has changed, in reality many things have changed. First, the authorities get a serious rival, who can mobilize political, financial and human resources to dictate new rules of the game. It’s also evident that Levon Ter-Petrosian will surely dictate the new rules, as the acting style of the authorities, as well as the opposition is well studied. Moreover, as time showed the latter cannot propose a new thing in the political struggle. It’s clear that the entrance of the first president into the political field adds a new intrigue, and instead of the boring presidential elections, where the victory of the present-day prime minister was beyond any doubt, a new period of developments are coming instead. In this period, everybody look at the first president’s side, every time waiting for a new step by him and the authorities’ response.

The first response of the authorities

I have already had an opportunity to mention that the authorities only contribute to the new developments around Levon Ter-Petrosian and consequently, display of new interests of the population.

The first evidence of the authorities’ improvident policy was the incident of October 23, when the police arrested some of the partisans of Levon Ter-Petrosian.

The second mistake was the responses of TVs to October 26 mass meeting in Azatutyun Square.

Of course, it’s an evident "secret" that all the Armenian TVs are controlled by the authorities. Moreover, this situation is advantageous to the first president and his partisans.

The speech of the first president at Azatutyun Square was not launched by any TV. Instead of it, the commentators considered it necessary to criticize it.

It’s clear that to a ordinary televiewer it remained unclear what Levon Ter-Petrosian had told. We should not forget that the preliminary duty of a mass media is providing of trustworthy information.

By not launching or presenting the speech of the first president objectively, those companies first of all have violated their televiewers’ rights.

Similar informational "hunger" will give an opportunity to the partisans of Levon Ter-Petrosian to anticipate a bigger crowd, what in its turn will give an opportunity to the first president to continue the composition of the political platform adding the number of its supporters and co-thinkers.

It’s clear that not all the gathered at Azatutyun Square support Levon Ter-Petrosian, but many are interested in what he says.

Therefore, we can conclude that the authorities with their improvident policy and controlled television companies contribute to the increase of the number of Levon Ter-Petrosian’s supporters.

What did Ter-Petrosian say

The whole speech of the first president you can read in azg.am website, therefore we will not refer to it in detail. However, we want to mention that it’s really a rather lettered and well-formed speech, where the created political situation in the country is presented close to objectivity. However, being acquainted with the speech and remembering every time that its author is the first president of Armenia, we understand that criticizing the present-day authorities he might also speak of his portion of blame. We should not forget that in the first part of 1990s Armenia was considered as an islet of democracy in the South Caucasus and that the name of the founder and the grave-digger of that islet is Levon Ter-Petrosian. Consequently, it would be better if the first president started his long-breathed speech with acceptance of his own mistakes of his government years. Self-criticism – this is what many people expected from Levon Ter-Petrosian. Nevertheless, we heard only a criticism addressed to the present-day authorities. We should not forget that the democracy in Armenia died under the wheels of tanks that were brought to the streets of Yerevan after the presidential elections of 1996. By the way, did Levon Ter-Petrosian apologize to Vasgen Manukian during the last meeting for taking away his victory in 1996? Anyway, after the political part of the speech the first president referred to the created economic situation in the country. We should say that this is the weakest part of his speech. Levon Ter-Petrosian never strikes attention with his deep economic knowledge; maybe it is the reason of serious contradictions and mistakes in the economic part of his speech. The first president finishes this part of his speech with the criticism of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, as, according to him, they are not objective in estimating the created economic situation in Armenia. Reference to October 27 incidents was probably a wrong calculated step, as the political rivals hurried to make use of it blaming him for needless speculation. The first president did not present a new position on NKR issue; he only read his previous viewpoints on the settlement of the issue.

New political situation in Armenia

Levon Ter-Petrosian’s return to a political sphere should be estimated as a positive step. At last, a new figure appeared to whom the authorities cannot apply their previous methods. Anyway, a question is raised in this situation - can the present-day authorities participate in a political game, where brains and not muscles are important. Under what rules this game will develop; it is hard to predict today, but it is clear that in this situation Levon Ter-Petrosian has a good chance of increasing his political rating and becoming the main rival of the candidates in the coming presidential elections. Anyway, the struggle developing between the present-day and previous authorities may give a good chance for a so-called third power to enter the political field. Eventually, it’s evident that in the struggle between the past and present, a thick crowd of the population wants to chose the future. But who is that future? The answer of this question costs a power. It means that the political power, which tries to be an alternative to the present and past, will have an opportunity to come to power. We should mention that the factor of the third power has always been urgent in Armenia, but it has never been as close to reality as now. The created situation can use equally both Vazgen Manukian and ARF. The latter has already started its campaign trying to persuade their co-thinkers that it is the third power and that coming to power it can take a serious turning in the development process of the country. We should mention that ARF chances of becoming a third power are bigger than Vazgen Manukian’s. ARF is more organized and has serious financial and political resources. Therefore, Levon Ter-Petrosian’s return is rather profitable to ARF, as it wants the main target of the opposition formed around the first president to be the Republican party and the authorities. Of course, all of these are only predictions and it’s very hard to speak of the real developments, but one thing is evident that Levon Ter-Petrosian’s return provides an interesting period of political developments in Armenia, at least for the journalists.

Source: http://www.azg.am/?lang=EN&num=2007110901

[Artsakh]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

I don't think there are many Armenians in the diaspora who support ter petrossian. I have not heard a single person say something positive about this traitor except for one frustated individual on this forum.

now that's not true. The diasporan Hnchakian party, more importantly its branches in Armenia, have embraced levon der pestrosyan's candidacy with open arms.

[Armenian]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

now that's not true. The diasporan Hnchakian party, more importantly its branches in Armenia, have embraced levon der pestrosyan's candidacy with open arms.

You mean all three of them

Oops... Sorry. I meant to say two. The third party member died of old age several years ago... Artakh, I once liked you. I now think you are a total and absolute fool. As far as I'm concerned, you might as well be a clown. Perhaps you can ask LTP if he can hire you as a mascot

[Yedtarts]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

"Local multi-millionaire businessman Khatchatur Sukiasian, also known as Grzo, was subject to tax inspections due to his support for the former president. Ironically, it has been frequently alleged that Sukiasian has evaded taxes during his time at the top of the pile under Ter Petrosian. His family is also reportedly related by marriage to former Minister of the Interior Vano Siradeghian still wanted by Interpol for masterminding several political assassinations in the 1990s.

A few days before the event, a youth activist from a minor political party, — the Democrat Hnchakian Party (SDHK) — was beaten by masked men while distributing anti-Sarkisian leaflets in a district of Yerevan. The Armenian Observer decried both the beating and the nature of the leaflets."

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/11/18/armenia-return-of-the-king-president/

[Artsakh]

Re: Presidential elections 2008 in Armenia

You mean all three of them

Oops... Sorry. I meant to say two. The third party member died of old age several years ago... Artakh, I once liked you. I now think you are a total and absolute fool. As far as I'm concerned, you might as well be a clown. Perhaps you can ask LTP if he can hire you as a mascot

I think that's quite a bit of an exaggeration. They recently celebrated their 120th anniversary here in LA, and the turnout was pretty big. While I'm not a member, i enjoy going to political events, including the dashnak ones. In my opinion, i think the hnchaks is trying to make a comeback, and become the dominant figure among the 3 traditional parties, and strenghten its position in yerevan.

In any manner, i still do like you. you are driven by national ideology, but your fault is that you let party finaticism get the better of you, including causing you to make stupid remarks regarding national heroes.

as regards to current situation in yerevan, i don't like the choices for president. both of them are untrustable. serge said aghdam is not armenian land and spoke of his readiness to return liberated territories, for which reason Zhirayr and his comrades were imprisoned because they spoke out against it.

I hate to see him in the presidents seat, and think he should be hanged. he was the minister of national security during the october 27 events, and was unable to prevent this humiliating diasaster. the respectable thing for him to do would be to step down and retire from politics. instead, he is aspiring to higher and higer posts. this is ludacris.

as far as levon is concerned, no matter what names you attach to him, the bottom line is that those things accomplished under his rule remain the facts, and anything else said about him is just empty talk. he's not perfect, but hes a 1000 times better than serj.