Levon Ter-Petrosian: I will not run for President

“Choorord Ishkhanutyun” daily published an interview with the first Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosian.
Below is an abridged version of the interview.

- It is no secret that at the moment the main, if not the only, intrigue related to the presidential election is the issue of your nomination or non-nomination, and the comments and forecasts published every day in the mass media bear evidence of that. What is your attitude towards this? 
- Surprise.

- What do you mean?
- I mean that those who are in favor or against my nomination have put forward dozens of arguments, but they disregard the most important argument. No one has raised the question: can a 68-year-old man respecting the people aspire to become President? Such a thing does not happen in developd democratic countries.

- Are there any exceptions?
- Of course, there are. But as a rule, they occur in an emergency situation, when because of a foreign threat, a chaos in the country or the absence of the government, the political elite, with society’s approval, sometimes even in circumvention of the Constitution, asks old, but authoritative political figures to take over the helm. For example, this happened in case of Churchill, Shevarnadze, Heydar Aliyev, and some others. The only exception was perhaps Reagan who election did fit into that scheme.

- But isn’t the situation in Armenia an emergency?
- It is not an emergency situation in the sense I mean. There is neither a chaos nor the absence of government in Armenia.

- So you will not run for President, will you?
- No, because a 68-year-old man is not as able and energetic as a man aged 40 or 60 which is the optimal age for political figures who aspire to become President. Therefore, persons who are younger than I am should enter the field.

- No doubt, your arguments are quite convincing, but don’t you think that many may consider this only a pretext?
- I should say that a person’s age can never be a pretext. You possibly forgot that in the speech I made ahead of the last presidential election, on 16 November 2007, I officially stated that three years after assuming the presidency I was prepared to leave politics and allow you to elect a new President of the country through free and legitimate elections.

- Nonetheless, I would ask you to answer frankly if there is any other reason for your non-nomination – besides the age factor?
- If there is one main reason, it is senseless to speak about the others. But because you insist, I should say there is another, purely technical reason which makes my nomination almost impossible. However, I won’t reveal it as few people would believe it in our cynical reality.

- Don’t you think that your decision will not be assessed unambiguously and there will be critical and discontented persons?
- Can you indicate a politician’s move that has been assessed unambiguously? Of course, there will be critical and discontented people, but there will also be people who will rejoice at it.

- Your supporters will be critical and discontented, while your opponents will rejoice.
- I am sure that some time later my supporters will realize that my decision was correct and honest, and I have never paid attention to the rejoicing of my opponents. And there will also be people who will satisfied with my decision and grateful to me. After my ten-year absence from politics, new leaders have not emerged, except for Stepan Demirchain who in 2003 defeated Robert Kocharian. Such leaders were born at that time, perhaps they will be born now. God grant!