Vazgen Manukyan: ’’It’s time to tighten the screws’’

-These cases differ, but they have something in common: during the last years certain officials felt inviolable and it seemed to them that it would last forever. If the President’s administration employee is not protected from assault, the common citizen is constantly undergoing this very assault by officials and oligarchs. What the mayor did is so preposterous that this case may be viewed as the starting point of changes, though previously there had been suchlike cases. I consider  the mayor’s resignation a very important step, which was followed by the dismissal of the minister of jurisdiction, as the latter had ignored the PM’s instruction to punish officials abusing their position.

-All right, what do these changes lead to?

-All these changes show that the policy is changing. It is changing in the sense that there is a struggle against things which are peculiar not only to the recent years, but the whole period of the twenty years of independence. These beatings have always existed during the years of independence. I think it is time for the ‘’screws’’ to be tightened. There have been cases when assaults have not been responded properly, but all the changes in the history begin with a preposterous case.

Knowing the president I can say that he has always been inwardly resisting this phenomenon and he had to start struggling against it once.

And Beglaryan’s conduct, to my mind, can’t be justified by anyone even in his own team.

-But there is a widespread opinion that if the assaulted one had been a common citizen, and not a presidential administration employee, this would not have happened.

-We can always look back and say ‘’Why was’t this or that person punished?’’. Everything starts some day at a certain point. Of course such a thing could not have happened in a civilized state. This very phenomenon has existed under Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan’s rule. Simply, within time, the wave of violence had abated, but the act of beating as a means of solving certain problems existed.I think that the president solved the problem in this way. It does not mean that we are becoming a fair country, but using physical force as a means of solving problems is now a taboo.

-In fact, the president got rid of a person who was loyal to him on his way of becoming a President. How should we take this?

-You know, things were different when the elections were being held, when there was a team. Being the President of the state is a great responsibility, which presupposes responsibility  first towards the people and history and only then towards friends, the party and co-thinkers. History witnesses the events having occurred under his rule. And, to my mind,  within years the one ruling the country comes to realize this. Charles de Gaulle, whose name is associated with the victory of France at  World War II, said, ‘’I feel as if I were on a peak where there is nobody else.’’