It would appear that the Armenian president, Robert Kocharian, is suffering from delayed-stress syndrome. According to RFE/RL, it took him until yesterday to launch his own salvo against the speech of his predecessor, Levon Ter Petrosian. The attack was aired on local television, presumably without giving his nemesis the right to respond. That’s a pity because it would be extremely beneficial to have a real debate on the situation in the country.

In his first public reaction to Ter-Petrosian’s Friday speech, Kocharian said independent Armenia’s first president is “filled with malice” and lacks elementary knowledge of economics. “It is that malice that had destroyed the [former ruling party] HHSh,” he said in remarks broadcast by Armenian television.

In his 90-minute speech at a big rally in central Yerevan, Ter-Petrosian reiterated his claims that Kocharian and his chief lieutenant, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, have turned Armenia into a “gangster state” based on rampant government corruption, utter disregard of law and suppression of dissent. Ter-Petrosian accused the ruling “criminal regime” of pocketing billions of dollars in taxes and informal payments allegedly extorted from local businesspeople. He also effectively held Kocharian responsible for the October 1999 armed attack on the Armenian parliament.

Kocharian did not directly comment on these allegations, choosing instead to again remind Armenians of severe hardship suffered by them during Ter-Petrosian’s rule. He said Armenia was “one of the most developed and industrialized republics of the Soviet Union” when the Ter-Petrosian-led HHSh swept to power in 1990. “Within three to four years Armenia became one of the poorest countries of the world,” he said.

“Armenia’s industry was destroyed in a matter of a few years,” added Kocharian. “It can be said now that they inherited an essentially normal [economic] situation and bequeathed to me in 1998 a country with a ruined economy.”

[…]

Throughout his leadership of Karabakh Kocharian was widely regarded as a staunch Ter-Petrosian ally and never publicly criticized the Yerevan government’s economic policies. He endorsed Ter-Petrosian’s hotly disputed reelection in 1996.

Kocharian’s criticism of Armenia’s former leadership was dismissed as a “deliberate lie” by Hrant Bagratian, Ter-Petrosian’s prime minister from 1993-1996. “You can’t talk like that,” he told RFE/RL in an interview. “Especially if you came to power thanks to your predecessor.”

[…]

Kocharian made the comments as he spoke to Armenia’s leading TV stations loyal to his administration after inaugurating a Diaspora-funded sporting facility in Yerevan. In what seems to have become a pattern, the presidential press service refused to grant an RFE/RL correspondent accreditation needed for covering the event.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008 Blog.