VAZGEN MANUKYAN WILL SUPPORT ARF CANDIDATE

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Chairman of the “National Democratic Union” Vazgen Manukyan announced today that if Serge Sargsyan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan passed to the second stage “it may make Serge Sargsyan a legitimate authority”. He also informed that if he passed to the second stage the “Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun” would support him, but if the ARF candidate passed to the second stage, he would support the ARF candidate. The same Vazgen Manukyan repeated in case of Raffi Hovhannisian and Arthur Baghdasaryan. It turns out that Manukyan will not support Ter-Petrosyan, although he has not announced about it. Manukyan notices that Ter-Petrosyan is indebted to the Armenian nation.

“Levon Ter-Petrosyan is indebted to our nation when he headed the country. In 1991 when he was elected as a president he took an oath that all state laws should be carried out and promised to make Armenia as prosperous as it was written in the declaration. But he breached his commitments. In 1996 he stole not my but the nation’s votes”, said Manukyan. He even hinted that he considered Ter-Petrosyan’s nomination incorrect.

Vazgen Manukyan does not welcome Ter-Petrosyan’s approach, particularly when the latter calls the authorities “a group of robbers”. Vazgen Manukyan notices that he is also against the current system “but I would not use the “group of robbers” for our state, not even for another state”.

By the way he disapproves both the authorities’ and the First President’s approaches in regard Karabakh conflict settlement. He even considers that Ter-Petrosyan is of the same opinion as he used to be in 1997. Vazgen Manukyan got this impression after Ter-Petrosyan’s 21 September speech. According to Manukyan, the First President tied the development of Armenia with the Karabakh conflict settlement, who in fact said: “Let’s get rid of Karabakh and live quietly without problems”.

“The authorities are speaking of keeping Karabakh, but they weaken the country from inside and in the international world and one day they will have to give away Karabakh willy-nilly. Azerbaijan has oil; it develops regularly and has reliable partners. If Armenia follows this way, if people are imprisoned, businessmen do not work normally and if they continue the model that has been set up since 1994, that the whole political, economic power is in the hands of a team, then the Karabakh problem will not be solved”, said Vazgen Manukyan and added that his position in this regard concurred with the position of ARF.