Says Zhirayr Sefilyan, a member of the Sardarapat Movement
Last Friday, at the ANC last rally of this year, Levon Ter-Petrossian, the leader of the Congress, made a statement-analysis on the prospect of cooperation between ANC and the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) that will remain the main topic of discussions till the end of this year. Ter-Petrossian’s proposal that was perceived by some of the member forces of ANC as another brilliant idea and was accepted with satisfaction raised concerns among other political organizations of the opposition. It turned out that for Zhirayr Sefilyan, the coordinator of the Union of Armenian Volunteers, a former member of ANC, this course of events was not a surprise. “What has taken place recently is not novel for me. I said long ago that ANC is on the wrong path. All this doesn’t surprise me, because I know that they are going for regular elections and the rest, rallies, speeches that have been made by the ANC leadership, aimed at one thing to deceive the people, in order to be able to bargain with the tyrant during elections”, said founding member of the Sardarapat Movement Zhirayr Sefilyan. Responding to our question whether ANC would be able to retain its existing electorate till the regular election showing reverence and making offers of cooperation to PAP or Gagik Tsarukyan, or quite an opposite process would take place, Zhirayr Sefilyan observed, “If you have followed my speeches during this past year and a half, you have noticed that it is not the first time I say that Ter-Petrossian’s electorate will be reduced so dramatically till the regular election that eventually he will ask Serzh Sargsyan to allow a group of his supporters to enter the parliament. I would like to say that today’s developments take place, according to the logic that they will reach the election, day-by-day discrediting themselves. The screenwriter of all this is Serzh Sargsyan.”
ANC and its leader Levon Ter-Petrossian have tried many times to attract, in particular, the PAP leader to the National Movement during the past three-four years, as early as in the pre-election period of the 2008 presidential election, before “March 1” and even after it, using carrot-and-stick strategy and all the time the proposal-analyses of the possible cooperation between ANC and PAP have been more like blackmailing that political force and its leader. At the time Ter-Petrossian and ANC were accusing the PAP leader of deadly sins, crimes, including Tsarukyan’s active involvement in “March 1” events, i.e. the participation of his bodyguards in it. Now they are ready to even forgive him, saying that there are no unforgivable sins or there are no permanent enemies. However, is it moral to put his “sins” aside when “March 1” is not yet uncovered, to forgive and for the sake of “forming a wider front of opposition forces” to start cooperation with “one of the pillars of the rule of bandits”, as at the time ANC were saying also referring to Tsarukyan.
Sefilyan considered this issue from the viewpoint of the Sardarapat Movement, “We are not only against the people’s participation in the elections, but also will participate in the elections only in case of forbidding both the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) and PAP and other parties that are accomplices in ‘March 1’, i.e. when they will be dissolved. This is our position. I don’t want to answer the question whether the attitude of ANC is moral or immoral.”
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NAIRA MAMIKONYAN
