“Revolution is an iron”

Avetik Ishkhanyan about the dialogue between the opposition and the authorities

– Armenian National Congress and Serzh Sargsyan’s government have been trying for a few months already to have a dialogue after a set of post-2008-election, I would say even, tragic events and after obviously and absolutely denying positions toward each other. Do you think that the dialogue is a success or will be a success?
– This is not new between the same Republican Party and the HHSh. In 1992-93, the Republican Party was collecting signatures to demand Levon Ter-Petrossian’s resignation. Then they went for a dialogue and the Republican Party appeared in the “Republic” block, and afterwards thanks to Vazgen Sargsyan they came to power. I.e. they shared the same views on the 1995 Constitution, they were jointly participating in the election rigging. The government has not changed in Armenia; one wing of the government has removed the other one from power. From this perspective, these two forces share the same system of values, therefore from resignation demand to a dialogue is quite natural and it would be even more natural if as in 1995, they eventually agree and run for the election with the same list. I think this will be the best solution for the Armenian society.
– If you think that it does not matter, nothing is going to change, why is it the best solution for the society?
– In that case, the real opposition vacuum will perhaps disappear. And the society will gain in the respect that a new opposition political force will be formed. One can define the political developments in Armenia as follows, roughly in 1993-94, it was already known that the Armenian authorities were not bearers of the democratic values. However, since 1990s there has been an opposition, which gave hope to the society that maybe the opposition would have been better than the government. This tendency – there is a government that they are displeased with and an opposition they pin their hopes on – continued until 2007. After that, we have had a government and an opposition that have been the same. I.e. as opposed to the previous period, now the people who have memory understand that if the government is bad, then the opposition is not at least better.
I am for the dialogue in essence, when the society through its different institutions, NGOs, parties etc. succeeds with its explicit civil disobedience and activity to create a big force and make demands to the government and other political forces. Those should not be with slogans like “hand the authority over to us” or “when are you going to hand around our offices?” that takes place these days, but with explicit demands that can contribute to the future development of the RA. I.e. a timetable for the constitutional amendments, where the independence of the municipal government, the independence of the judicial power, the civil supervision over the state structures are guaranteed, only after which one might speak of the elections. And putting forward only election demands today means only a struggle for the authority. The European democracy was also established through the pressure of civil society and the limitation of government. Unfortunately, our society is still seeking a good king. And this will be a vicious circle and we can achieve no result even in the case of a possible revolution, i.e. change of government.
In March 2008 I had an article published, entitled “Death or authority”, where analyzing the situation, I advised both sides to go for a dialogue with the following agenda; the government releases all the political prisoners right away, brings the Law on Rallies to its previous state, the opposition freezes the revolution and negotiations are conducted on the above-mentioned issues. The critics among the opposition wrote sharp articles, they even made such an expression, “The revolution is not an iron so you can switch it off.” Until the leader of my opponents said that he was not a revolutionary and my opponent humbly switched off the iron.
– Basically having suffering political prisoners for three years, the opposition eventually went for a dialogue. Was it not right to do that at the time and not waste three years?
– In this regard, I shall tell a story that I heard from a grandson of a resident of Van and he heard it from his grandfather, “Two Van residents go out having 4 gold coins each. They see excrements on the way. One says to the other, if you eat them, I will give you one gold coin. He eats and takes the gold coin and they move on. Shortly afterwards they see excrements again. This time this one says to the other, eat and I will give you a gold coin. This one also eats and takes the gold coin and they move on. They walk for a while and one asks the other, how many gold coins did we have when we left Van? He says four. And now how many do we have? He says four. Then why did we eat them?”