Why was Bidzina Ivanishvili successful in Georgia? Certainly, manifold factors played a role here – one of the most important among them is that this person has never held any office, has never been in the ruling political team and thus, has not managed to do anything bad in that country (yet). He basically was from outside, he hasn’t lived in Georgia for a long time. The other oppositionists bring back unpleasant memories this way or another, since they were a part of the government at the time and didn’t prove to be embodiments of the ideal.
The same thing applies to Armenia. No matter how much any former government official says about himself or his political team that they were just, efficient, honest etc., to begin with, one is doubtful whether generally a politician, let alone a government official, can be such, particularly when it comes to not Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela or Vaclav Havel, but to Robert Kocharyan. However, even if we don’t consider that a bit extreme case, those who have been on our political stage for 25 years don’t want to admit the most important thing – all of them, having many personal differences, are people from the same culture having the same political style and mentality.
Talking about the fact that the National Assembly had handed over Vartan Oskanian, the second President of Armenia writes, “This is a striking example of the parliament’s discrediting itself with negative effects for the country’s reputation.” It is an absolutely correct assessment. But in order to be absolutely objective, one should add just one word “another.” So this is not the first, nor, unfortunately, the last one. The parliament discredited itself for the first time on September 26, 1996, when, not going into who had organized the attack on the National Assembly and the beating of the parliament leadership the previous day, it withdrew the immunity of all oppositionists beating many of them in advance. The second case of self-discrediting was when Vano Siradeghyan’s immunity was withdrawn based on the testimony of one witness. Then after the events of March 1, 2008, the parliament handed over 4 opposition MPs ostensibly for organizing riots. By the way, in the last two cases, the application was made by Attorney General Aghvan Hovsepyan. I am convinced that Robert Kocharyan thinks that in these two cases, Mr. Hovsepyan acted as a propagator of law and order and a professional. Thus, what grounds does he have to think that in Oskanian’s case, the Attorney General has brought a cooked-up story to the parliament?
I am certainly talking not only about the second president, but also about members of all parties who willingly withdraw the immunity of their political opponents and when it comes to their own team complain about the political instructions.
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There is no Bidzina in Armenia and he will not be seen in the near future.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
