When politicians want to insult each other, they often use the last name “Geghamyan,” saying that the opponent behaves like Geghamyan. They mean that he is not consistent and doesn’t adhere to his principles. There is no denying, Mr. Geghamyan really has a talent of transformation – particularly, he appeared as an opposition candidate in a few presidential campaigns, after which he adroitly changed his position, gaining a lot of benefits from that. However, to say that Artashes Mamikonich is the only politician who changes his position is an exaggeration, to say the least.
One shouldn’t be a very careful analyst to see that there are a lot of people on our political stage who cursed Ter-Petrossian, Tsarukyan, Oskanian or Serzh Sargsyan and now, when the mentioned figures take steps, which are in the interest of those cursing people and their teams, at least show loyalty. If Gagehamyan himself starts to play a game that is in his criticizers’ interest, the latter will not use him as an example of unscrupulousness.
Perhaps, such a change in attitude is shown only toward persons and in the case of principles, they are as strong as our mountains. However, it is not so either. You think that, say, in 1995, the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM) was for 100-percent proportional representation? No, the government of the time tried to maintain the majoritarian representation at any cost, because it had a task to squeeze its lords of the underworld and oligarchs into the parliament. For the same reason, the Republican Party holds on to the majoritarian representation. Or have you ever seen the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) struggle for a parliamentarian system of government during Kocharyan’s tenure. Or as recently as two years ago, the Armenian National Congress (ANC) was convinced that the slaughter of March 1 had been organized by Kocharyan and now, it seems that they are inclined to think that it was done by Serzh Sargsyan, because in case of certain developments, the second president might be an indirect ally of the ANC.
The same thing applies to the issue of political persecution. The PANM thinks that it did the right thing when it persecuted the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), but the others who have been persecuted since 1998 have been persecuted wrongfully. And Oskanian, for example, thinks that before the events of March 1 and after them, the government did the right thing that it put people in prison (at least, he has never objected to that), and now cooking up a case against him is wrong. No political force states that political persecution from the ARF members to Vano to arrests of 2004 to the events of March 1 to Vartan Oskanian and Tigran Arakelyan is unacceptable. Therefore, one shouldn’t focus on Geghamyan.
Aram Abrahamyan
