Who stands behind wiretapping?
The practice of publishing bugged political conversation was started in Armenia five years ago. Leader of the Country of law Party (OEK) Arthur Baghdasaryan was the first to be secretly recorded in 2007 in a Yerevan café before the parliamentary election.
In the recorded conversation, Baghdasaryan was persuading a British diplomat to give a negative assessment of the parliamentary election to be held in the country in May of the same year. The recording was immediately libeled as black PR and no one charged for the secret recording. In its turn, the National Security Service denied its connection with the wiretapping and publication of the conversation. Robert Kocharyan (Armenia's President from 1998 till 2008) called Arthur Baghdasaryan a parricide. The same Baghdasaryan today is holding the position of National Security Council Secretary.
The teammates of Armenia's first president and leader of the opposition Armenian National Congress were the next in Armenia to be secretly bugged in 2008. Following the deadly post-election clashes of March 1, 2008, a covert recording with the conversation between Alexander Arzumanyan [head of Ter-Petrosyan's election headquarters] and Nikol Pashinyan [member of the headquarters] was put into circulation. The recording was later attached to the material on March 1 clashes where the Procurator's Office tried to shift the responsibility for the ten victims on Arzumanyan and Pashinyan as its spokesperson had earlier announced that the police had not open fire at the demonstrators.
Today the opposition press and political forces blame Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan for the March 1 tragic events.
In the newly-wiretapped recording HAK Coordinator Levon Zurabyan and ex-Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian are discussing the possibility of fielding their candidates in the upcoming presidential election.
The National Security Service has again denied its connection to the covert recording which has caused a stir among political circles and on online social networking sites. Many say the recording aims to quarrel Levon Zurabyan, Nikol Pashinyan and Hrant Bagratyan. During the conversation, Zurabyan says that if HAK leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan decided not to run for president himself, and the opposition bloc was discussing the possibility of fielding former Prime Minister Hrant Bagratyan as a candidate instead. No one cares to ask why opposition figures are bugged and who is wiretapping ordered by. The question still remains unanswered.
