khosq.com

Since the
bloody events of the 1st March, Levon Ter-Petrossian has made
forty-five applications to the Mayor’s office for a meeting at one or another
of Yerevan’s two recognized meeting areas to talk to his supporters. But although
he complied with the newly imposed requirement that applications for meetings
should be made forty days in advance, all have been rejected. The application
for a meeting to be held at the Liberty Square on the 20th June attracted
a similar response. At the last moment the Mayor’s office broke his own rules by
advising that the meeting could not go ahead because of a children’s event which
had priority. LTP therefore asked approval for the meeting to be held at
Yerevan’s second recognized meeting site, in front of the Matenadaran Museum.
But without explanation, the Mayor’s office advised that that site would also
not be available.

In defiance
to the mayor’s ruling, following a 16th and 17th June visit to Armenia by a monitoring
commission for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and
encouraged by assurances by Armenia’s authorities that it would abide by its
commitments to the Council of Europe and allow freedom of assembly, LTP eventually
decided to go ahead with the 20th June meeting.

The meeting
was scheduled to start at six in the evening in the grounds leading up to the
Matenadaran Museum, and despite the meeting having been deemed illegal, and despite
the area being guarded by an imposing contingency of police and young soldiers,
some with riot shields and truncheons, by the six O’clock starting time an
impressive crowd had already gathered. The army cadets then immediately withdrew,
leaving the police, who in a friendly and restrained manner controlled the outskirts
of the crowd to make sure they did not hinder the free flow of traffic. This turned
out to be a classic example of how Sargsyan, Kocharian, and their state system
have excellent capabilities to organize, even in the face of adversity.

At 6.45 pm,
LTP and his entourage quietly made their way through the line of police and then
through the crowd to the platform in front of the Matenadaran Museum. At 7.00
pm an announcement was made that the meeting had been approved and it went
ahead peacefully and without incident.

Notably,
LTP continued his criticism of Armenia’s former President Kocharian, insisting
he should face trial for his crimes, including for the killings of the 1st
March. But his rhetoric toward Sargsyan was decidedly of an accommodating
nature. LTP re-confirmed his commitment to the endeavor to return Armenia
toward the path of democracy, and announced another meeting would be arranged
for the 4th July.

Having
witnessed the event first hand, I came away with a number of impressions regarding
the entire proceedings:

Firstly, it
was encouraging to see how determined the people were to face up to the threats
and intimidation from Armenia’s authorities and to attend the meeting, which
they did in sufficiently impressive numbers to send the right signal to the authorities
and to the international community.

Secondly, after
the authorities had done all they could to avoid a meeting taking place, when
the showdown eventually came, the level and makeup of the security services deployed
to the meeting was entirely appropriate for the occasion, and they made every
effort to allow the meeting to go ahead peacefully.

Thirdly,
the media and international monitors were well represented and they moved
freely among the crowd, taking pictures and talking to participants.

Fourthly,
and possibly most significant, although the meeting started at 6.0 pm and LTP
arrived at 6.45 pm, it was not until after 7.30 pm that the loudspeaker system
was up and running to allow LTP and his companions make their speeches. Moreover,
for more than an hour and a half, the crowd was left standing, with no idea of
how the proceedings would develop. There
were no groups of cheerleaders, no leaflets, very few hand held banners and
posters and I saw only one hand held loud hailer. This meeting demonstrated
that LTP’s support team, although admittedly severely restricted by detentions
and other harassments, was not able to perform effectively, even for this
single very important meeting, which had been eagerly awaited for three months.
A much better effort needed to be made to give guidance to the demonstrators
and to help the proceedings go ahead more smoothly.

On the
contrary, throughout the past three months LTP and his companions have worked impressively
with the international community, attracting their support to the democratic
opposition movement, and encouraging them to challenge Armenia’s regime for
resorting to undemocratic means in order to hold on to power. The international
community has responded very positively, and although John Prescott of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) initially shocked the people of Armenia
by announcing that the constitutional court decision confirming the
Presidential result should be accepted, when that decision had been made
unconstitutionally during a ‘State of Emergency’, after his 16th and 17th June trip
to Armenia, he fundamentally changed his position. Together with his companion Georges
Colombier he warned that Armenia was not complying with its commitments to the Council
of Europe and the case would be put before the commission later in June,
including numerous points in resolution 1609, one being that the Armenian
authorities repeal the serious restrictions on freedom of assembly. The Council
of Europe has warned that if Armenia did not comply with 1609, it could lose
its voting rights during the organization’s next session that starts on June 23.

Similarly,
on the 18th June, Daniel Fried, U.S. Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs, made highly critical comments about Armenia
to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. He said
geographic isolation, widespread corruption, and recent setbacks to democratic development
have prompted the United States to make supporting Armenia's integration into
the region "a particular priority”.

Thanks to
the tremendous effort LTP and his colleagues have put in through the past three
months, International support to a movement back toward democracy in Armenia
could not be better. The people of Armenia have shown that they are ready to
continue the struggle, many encouraged in the belief that LTP has already shown
he can attract enough votes to win an election.

So that raises
the most important question: If there was to be a new Presidential election,
would LTP be adequately prepared to not only win more votes than his opponents,
but to prevail over the incumbents - in what he knows only too well has become
a well-established autocratic Armenia. Hopefully LTP will soon get that second
chance. But when he does, he must be prepared much better than he was for this
meeting; he must be fully ‘Able’, as well as being ready and willing. Otherwise
democracy will again fail and Armenia will be destined to many more years of
tyranny.