While Yerevan prepares for another opposition meeting in Liberty Square this Friday it would appear that the role of blogs and the media in Armenia is becoming clearly defined. While both the pro-opposition and pro-government media take on the role of propagandizing for their preferred candidates, bloggers are asking more awkward questions of both sides. One of those bloggers is Artmika at Unzipped.

Friends report from Yerevan that there are leaflets all over the capital inviting people for a (second) mass rally by ex-President and presidential hopeful Levon Ter-Petrosyan on 16 November. The main expectation of people who plan to go to the rally is that Levon at last will answer to the criticism over his period of presidency. They hope to hear his reflection over such issues as corruption, 1996 presidential elections (which many consider was a green light to all subsequent election frauds), Karabakh and so on. People expect and hope. Will Ter-Petrosyan deliver? We have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, as the pro-government media attacks Ter Petrosian for his time in power, some media outlets once considered “independent” are becoming more and more pro-opposition. One of those publications is Hetq Online, whose English/Translation editor is the wife of Ter Petrosian’s right hand man, former foreign minister, Alexander Arzumanian.

While many ordinary Armenians consider that Ter Petrosian should explain why they were forced to endure extreme hardships in the early to mid-90s while members of his government prospered, or why tanks were sent out onto the streets during his controversial 1996 re-election, Hetq Online’s Tigran Paskevichian takes it upon himself to answer for the former first president instead.

A large number of people who have reservations about the candidacy of the founding President of the Republic say that in order to return to politics and receive the vote of the people, Levon Ter-Petrosyan must ask for forgiveness.

This is one of the prevailing clichés that people repeat constantly - often without entertaining any doubt as to the correctness and fairness of what they say. In other words, those who hold this view want Ter-Petrosyan to admit the dubious facts that have been circulated by his political opponents over the last fifteen years without lifting a finger to determine their objective and subjective sides.

[…]

Equally popular is the issue of his “entourage”, and even today many people are ready to vote for Ter-Petrosyan provided that he renounces or estranges himself from his former entourage. This accusation was put into circulation in the early years of independence mainly by the Soviet nomenklatura. Those who had led the Communist party and state apparatus had lost their positions due to a concatenation of circumstances and, unable to find a place in the new times and the new reality, they took revenge upon the “new people” by smearing them.

[…]

The only exception was Vano Siradeghyan, and the only witness (who was also the perpetrator of the crime he was witness to) in the case fabricated against Siradeghyan was set free before the end of his sentence after Siradeghyan left the country and made head of one of Robert Kocharyan’s regional election offices.

[…]

Those who insist that before returning to politics Ter-Petrosyan must ask for forgiveness from the people are not only refusing to remember the past, to compare or confront the facts, but also have not understood the moral value of his resignation. […]

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