A conversation between the third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan and filmmaker Mher Mkrtchyan about the events of April 2018
A conversation between the third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan and filmmaker Mher Mkrtchyan about the events of April 2018.
Mher Mkrtchyan: Mr President, this situation is rather unusual for me, because I have never interviewed any former or incumbent Presidents. Moreover, if I can be fully open, I have never interviewed anyone. It’s more comfortable for me to stand on the other side, behind the cameras. That’s my profession. Yet on the day of my film premiere you promised to answer all my questions even if that conversation would last till late night. I could not allow that opportunity to be wasted. This is quite fascinating for me.
My questions are divided into seven segments, since I am used to working by a scenario. The first segment is about your resignation. Many people I know, Mr President, among those who have stood in the square in 2018 to demand your resignation, many-many of those same people are now blaming it on you that you relinquished power then. They are often saying, “OK, we didn’t understand much, but the President should have understood everything, right?” I have been thinking about this.
Indeed, you have had your analysts, you had National Security Service, you had a powerful system. Why did you allow that to happen, Mr President? What can we respond to those people? Yes, you are being blamed for giving up power.
Serzh Sargsyan: It’s not strange for me that people are asking that kind of questions. I think it’s only natural. What else should they do? They won’t blame themselves, will they? Should they say they were standing in the square, or that they were closing down street traffic, that they have been chanting that “dmb-dmb-hoo”? They have every right to shift the blame on me.
Mher Mkrtchyan: Nevertheless, Mr President, did you understand back then, or maybe not exactly, that we were going to face such a national catastrophe? Or you did not?
Serzh Sargsyan: Well, when I say “who else shall people blame?”, I am not implying that I don’t consider myself sinful in that.
No doubt I did not imagine at the time that it would lead to such consequences. Of course, I would understand clearly that it was an anti-Karabakh movement. I understood well that people en masse were made to believe for years that Armenia is a non-developing country, that corruption in our country had peaked to unspeakable levels, that injustice in Armenia is infinite, etc etc. But that such a catastrophe would have happened, of course, I could not have possibly foreseen. I understood that indeed there could be some issues, understood that if the main negotiators in the peace process changed, the Karabakh conflict resolution would have taken a different turn. That was quite possible. That’s how I saw it then.
Mher Mkrtchyan: I don’t know, perhaps it’s easy to speak about this after three years, but now, remembering the events in the Public Radio building (which is a strategic object under special protection), when they broke in and occupied the building, one must not be a lawyer to understand that it provided all necessary basis to arrest Nikol. And now, if we can look at that situation from the perspective of people asking the questions I mentioned earlier, why did you not arrest him after the takeover of the Radio building?
Serzh Sargsyan: Yes, it’s clear that was a criminal offense. But I was looking into it in the bigger picture, with a different point of view, given they were in small numbers, there was no prognosis that the movement could expand and gain the momentum it eventually had gained. And we decided that it could have become reminiscent to the scenarios in other countries, where an arrest or use of force had caused those movements to gain a totally different nature. This is the only reason why no arrest took place. We thought that it was maybe a small bait so that he was arrested, then be made a hero and all that to cause the movement gain momentum.
Mher Mkrtchyan: Mr President, this is a question I cannot possibly skip. In my movie the chief of Police tells you “…give me an hour and the city will return to its normal life”. This is probably a movie director’s temptation in my case to ask, did the head of Police in reality tell you anything like that?
Serzh Sargsyan: That is a bit exchaggerated. Had we made a decision to use force, we would no doubt proceed to do that. In the early stages we did not have such a decision, because we thought that the right approach was to handle it easy, so to say, and lead that movement to slow down and fade, in particular, because we had the experience of it. Remember “Electric Yerevan” or the takeover of the police station in Erebuni, or some other cases in the past, when the number of people engaged in those, so to say, events had been much larger, but we succeeded in reducing those movements to extinction. Let me reiterate, that indeed, at any point – virtually at any point – that matter could have been resolved by using force. But if we tried to resort to force on later days – on April 19, 20, 21 or 22 – I think the consequences would have been much more serious. Keep in mind how many children and women had there been among the protesters. And that made us to refrain from that.
Mher Mkrtchyan: Often times among my friends, when I try to answer that question myself and tell them “…but there would be blood spilled in the street”, they turn back to me and ask “…had it not been spilled? Look how much blood was spilled!” In any case, I don’t know, I don’t like going back into history when you already know what happened and try to answer questions… In the 2018 everything seemed from the perspective of 2018. But again, in any case, had you known the consequences we lived through, would you resort to using force?
Serzh Sargsyan: If I knew what would be the consequences, I would take any measures to prevent what later happened. I just left to let those people build the country of their dreams. I could not think that they dreamed about something else, or that they would be so incompetent. I could not possibly imagine such a disgrace. And let me reiterate, I firmly believed that the country should have taken a slightly different turn, and please do not question that. But that such devastating consequences would those “dmb-dmb-hoo” chants have…
To be continued…
