Epress.am News from Armenia
Asked whether the “hundreds of thousand” people in the fight led by the Armenian National Congress (HAK) after the events of March 1, 2008, who joined the Nationwide Movement in the fall of 2007, were striving for dialogue (between HAK and the authorities) or the “organized toppling of the bandit state” and systemic changes in the country, political analyst Suren Surenyants said:
“Every political entity has maximal and minimal aims. The authorities also didn’t strive for concessions or dialogue. But ahead of the parliamentary and presidential elections, both clearly realized something: the authorities realized that they can’t neutralize the HAK factor and the [Armenian National] Congress realized that it can’t achieve early elections, and political pragmatism, which suggests that certain rules of the game have to be established between the two key forces, became a priority,” reports local daily Aravot (“Morning”).
Asked by Aravot whether any dialogue with a leader of a “bandit state” fits within a framework of morality, Surenyants said, “Perhaps it was wrong from the beginning to circulate such terms. Now the parties have both resigned from expressions such as ‘bandit state’… which is more welcoming than speaking with each other using labels.”
Surenyants added, neither the authorities nor HAK need snap parliamentary elections — such elections are not advantageous because neither are ready for these in an institutional sense, reports Aravot.