FROM “TRAITOR” TO SECRETARY: THE CURIOUS UPS AND DOWNS OF ARTUR BAGHDASARYAN

A coalition agreement between three political parties – the Republican Party of Armenia led by current Prime Minister and President-elect Serzh Sargsyan, tycoon Gagik Tsarukyan-led Prosperous Armenia and ex-parliament speaker Artur Baghdasaryan’s Orinats Yerkir – was signed in Yerevan on February 29. Thus, on the last day of February 2008 Orinats Yerkir stopped to be opposition which it was since May 2006 when the party’s political council decided on its quitting the governing coalition. The reasoning for the step was contradictions in issues of domestic and foreign policies as well as differences in approaches to deepening democracy. It was then that Artur Baghdasaryan tendered his resignation as parliament speaker. Moreover, it was on February 29 this year that it became known that as a result of the power-sharing deal the politician would assume the post of Secretary of the Security Council attached to the new president of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan.
The fact of the agreement on such a coalition government and especially Baghdasaryan’s appointment to such a key post objectively falls out of the logic of his relations with representatives of the top authorities in the period immediately preceding the new alliance. Remarkably, in April of last year President Robert Kocharyan called the ex-speaker of parliament a “traitor” in the aftermath of a controversial wiretapping scandal.
“It is difficult to imagine that Armenia’s former parliament speaker could have fallen so lowly,” the president said then commenting on Baghdasaryan’s meeting with Deputy Ambassador of Great Britain to Armenia Richard Hyde during which Baghdasaryan was convincing the European diplomat of the need for a tough negative evaluation by international observers of the forthcoming parliamentary elections and claimed that the evaluation of the observers would largely depend on the evaluation that the Orinats Yerkir party would voice after the parliamentary elections.
“I consider it as a manifestation of treachery, what makes this meeting even more ugly is that the initiative of the meeting came from Artur Baghdasaryan,” Armenia’s president emphasized then. “Many turn to the authorities with proposals not to allow him to participate in the elections. However, I don’t consider a tough attitude of the authorities to be correct. Let Baghdasaryan run in the elections. If there are no patriots in the country, let them vote for him. He who has betrayed once, can do it for a second or third time, these actions determine his character.”
This example alone is sufficient to speak about an artificial character of this alliance. But there were other examples as well. In May 2006, in an interview with the German Frankfurter Allgemaine Zeitung publication, Baghdasaryan in particular stated that “the European Union and NATO are Armenia’s future” and “Russia must not stand in the way to Europe.” This statement elicited a sharp reaction from Kocharyan who, reminding that “under the Constitution it is the president of Armenia who determines the country’s foreign policy”, stated: “What was said by the speaker perhaps reflects his changed viewpoint.” It was in May 2006 that Artur Baghdasaryan resigned.
Thus, the signing of the coalition agreement should have been based on so strong grounds that would push to the background the fact of strained relations between the head of state and the former top legislator.
“Certain forces in the West indeed staked on Artur Baghdasaryan as a possible successor of Armenia’s incumbent president, which conditioned the unavoidability of his pro-western speeches on the threshold of the parliamentary and presidential elections,” political analyst Levon Ghazaryan says. “Artur Baghdasaryan appeared not only as a proponent of Armenia’s membership in NATO, but also as an advocate of other Western projects – the establishment of a South Caucasus parliament, absence of territorial claims to Turkey and many others. It is for this very reason that he eventually went to radical opposition.”
The second stake of the forces interested in the “Apricot Revolution” was, in the expert’s opinion, the first president of the republic Levon Ter-Petrosyan. This circumstance conditioned a certain tension in the relations between the two politicians which subsequently grew into conflict. Either side insisted on its approach regarding the fielding of a single candidate, and the ambitious strife eventually predetermined the split. As a result of the February 19 presidential election, the two of them jointly polled 623,649 votes (or 39.2 percent) of the total number of people who went to the polls, which is considerably less than the vote garnered by the government candidate Serzh Sargsyan and is comparable to the performance of Karen Demirchyan in the presidential election of 1998.
“Theoretically, the possibility of joining forces and representing the single protest electorate already during the process of appealing the vote results at the Constitutional Court existed also after the election,” Ghazaryan says. “The suspense lasted up to the last day of February. Baghdasaryan himself did not exclude that.”
Indeed, on February 26 Artur Baghdasaryan stated that he was conducting negotiations with ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan. He said that the matter might concern “uniting around a common goal and not about joining Levon Ter-Petrosyan.” Commenting on the elections, Baghdasaryan said that their legitimacy was under a big question, however he underscored that “the party had not yet determined whether it would turn to the Constitutional Court.”
It was at that very period that the newly elected president appealed to all political forces urging them to unite and offered a key post to Baghdasaryan.
“Baghdasaryan accepted that offer apparently proceeding from several considerations,” the expert says. “Firstly, he understood that it was becoming practically impossible to connect any prospects with Levon Ter-Petrosyan, since the latter was going to open confrontation paying heed to no one and nothing. Secondly, in the event of quite a predictable defeat he would have the prospect of being only the leader of one of the opposition parties, while the high councilor post would allow him not only to participate in state life, but also be informed practically on all major issues. And due awareness is of course a suitable springboard in terms of marking the outlines of his future career.”
And the authorities, on their part, have demonstrated to the international community their readiness to cooperate with all political forces, including with a force whose leader was called a “traitor” less than a year ago. In the expert’s opinion, it was quite a judicious step, though it is not ruled out that it was the step that aggravated the wrath of the first president who led the people to the slaughter.
Aris Ghazinyan

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