WAS IT THE LACK OF COURAGE OR HONESTY?

The main peculiarity of L. Ter-Petrosyan’s speech delivered during the June 20 demonstration was that he tried, on the one hand, to restrict himself to the scope of the new post-electoral developments and on the other hand, came into unsolvable conflicts with them.
Of course, as a master skilled enough to “extort maximum benefit” from the electoral and post-electoral developments, the ex-President was again in his elements on the 20th of June. As usual, he was unsparing both in his criticism and the assessments and characterizations deriving thereof. However, L. Ter-Petrosyan could not have ignored the fact that there are new authorities formed in Armenia after the elections, and they have already undertaken certain steps towards relieving the internal political tension and initiating reforms.
On June 20, Mr. Ter-Petrosyan was simply obliged to swallow the political assessment of those steps. That’s why, he stated in the final part of his speech that the opposition, be it in Armenia or any other part of the world, has “two functions”. The first function is to come to power – something which requires much time, and the second function is “to press the authorities to make positive steps for their people”.
There was an impression that after confirming the above-mentioned realities, the ex-President would have enough courage to enumerate the positive steps made by the authorities within the past 3 months; steps, which he believed, were the aftermath of the opposition’s pressures. And no matter to what extent such allegation would correspond to the reality, society might conclude that the Ter-Petrosyan-led opposition was fulfilling its functions, i.e. it was using pressure against the authorities, pushing them to positive steps.
And despite the statements saying, “If we do something good, who will say that we are doing wrong things?”, Ter-Petrosyan practically lacked the courage and perhaps, honesty to be as good as his word.
Judge yourselves: the ex-President believes that the new authorities of the country have been busy with the reshuffling of the human resources; and nothing more. In particular, no steps were made towards establishing tax control over the monopolists, appointing professional, well-disciplined human resources to the important government posts and solving other problems.
The following question comes up: if Ter-Petrosyan believes in this kind of declarative statements, how does he account for the fact that the custom fees entering the state budget, for instance, increased twice during the month of May. And isn’t the above-mentioned enough to insist that there is really a certain tax control over the monopolists?
With regard to the professional and well-disciplined human resources, there’s the following question: can Mr. Ter-Petrosyan insist that the new President has not appointed such kind of people as Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense, positions that are of pivotal significance for the country’s domestic and foreign policy?
Haven’t the electoral and post-electoral developments of the past months, including the political pressure of the Ter-Petrosyan-led opposition, produced a certain impact on the new authorities which are engaged in introducing reforms in certain spheres and appointing well-disciplined and professional human resources?
Why, apart from ignoring those steps, is Mr. Ter-Petrosyan trying to cast a dark shadow even on his own investments in those achievements? Doesn’t this testify to the fact that the ex-President is persistently continuing to ignore the positive steps of the authorities, without voicing his protest against them?
Moreover, Ter-Petrosyan not only ignores the positive steps, but also tries to disseminate distrust towards the officials who are engaged in initiating the reforms mentioned above. Otherwise he wouldn’t have remembered about the sale of the gold reserves, a bargain concluded in the period when Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan was the Chair of the Central Bank. Does he really think that the CBA Chairman made that step on his own? And if not, why does he make his accusations in this particular direction?
The answer is obvious. The ex-President does not have the courage to make an objective assessment on the economic initiatives undertaken by T. Sargsyan after assuming the post of Prime Minister, because these initiatives are much bolder in nature than the theoretical assumptions of Hrant Bagratyan, the “greatest reformer” of the time.
We believe that instead of revealing the objective reality, L. Ter-Petrosyan proved the extreme subjectivism of his assessments, by ignoring the positive developments achieved by the new President and Government during the past months.
Enumerating the material “functions” of the opposition, L. Ter-Petrosyan forgets that by virtue of being its leader, he is now obliged to practice what he preaches. And if he still continues to pursue only one of the functions, i.e. the function of coming to power, while forgetting about the other, no less important function of pushing the authorities to positive steps by pressure and making an objective assessment on their achievements, he is from now on displaying an unconscientious attitude towards the obligations he enumerates.
ARMEN TSATOURYAN

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