Why do they swap horses while crossing the stream?

Vahan Hovhannisyan, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) leader answers “Aravot’s” questions

– The establishment takes very interesting and unexpected steps, in particular during the past week. In your opinion, why are these sensational steps taken?
– They are preparing for the election.
– Let them prepare, but why do they prepare necessarily through discharges, resignations and shifts?
– Different parties prepare for the election differently. There are people who strengthen their propaganda, there are people who save up, accumulate money that will be distributed or spent on asphalting neighborhoods. However, there also are organizations that are forced to freshen the team from within, as a result of strategic mistakes made in the past. Which organizations are those? Those are the organizations that were warned by me at the time that it was a delusion and a mistake to think that one becomes a master of the state bureaucratic apparatus by fully adopting that apparatus and gets leverage by that. This is a delusion, because in reality in case of implementing such mechanisms, the opposite takes place, the bureaucratic apparatus takes over that party and that apparatus works according to principles that absolutely differ from the principles of classical, normal party leadership. Not issues of ideology, political struggle and correcting political direction, but administrative issues are resolved there. And when it comes to taking measures that will guarantee the free expression of popular will, i.e. elections, this kind of “administrative” parties that are always government parties, no matter what they are called, start to make revisions and reforms of administrative nature. It doesn’t certainly mean that accumulation of money and some propaganda events do not take place in the meantime, but the crystallization process of the team is more important for them, i.e. loyalty to the master.
– Nevertheless, will you agree that all these steps, even firing brother-in-law are like, to speak chess language, a situation when the white start and win.
– They start, yes, we will have to wait and see whether they win or not and as to firing relatives, why do you see this that way, perhaps they send their relatives somewhere “on a business trip”, for example, to supervise, organize and coordinate.
– Do you see anything bad in that?
– I don’t think it is right to employ closest relatives at all, but if it is already the case, naturally, trusting and sending on а business trip to organize and supervise become comprehensible.
– Don’t you think that few politicians would do such thing, i.e. go for such redistribution in the run-up to the election, you know, there is a well-known proverb, “Never swap horses while crossing the stream”, but the President of the Republic is going for that rather boldly?
– I think unnecessary horses are just removed, because first, they eat more hay and second, there was an expression in the past, it was called Zug – Zug is a German word for a set of railroad cars, and when the Russian or German aristocracy harnessed 20-30 horses to pull one coach or carriage, it was certainly very impressive, nevertheless, in peacetime. It was rather hard to quickly travel long distances on such a Zug, because it was hard to train all those horses to keep pace with each other. That is the reason why while crossing the stream they only retained those horses that were already trained as much as to be sure that they will not make a mistake or dread.
– With or without Zug, will you agree that these steps have neutralized the opposition – both the people standing in the square and those out of it seem to become secondary; we see as if there is no opposition and the establishment forms the agenda?
– It is natural that the establishment creates an agenda for the discussion, but it is one of the goals, perhaps the main goal. We notice that tactics in the activities of the extreme opposition and the establishment, we have noticed lots of times that when there is really a serious agenda, for example change of power through election, false agendas always appear. For example, the extreme opposition, neglecting the most important agenda, deal with some people whom they call political prisoners, or chant absolutely disorientating and weakening slogans about, for example, span elections, immediate resignations etc. Well, so many people have resigned, what has changed, nothing – suppose this was done on their demand, what has changed, nothing. The same tactics is applied by the establishment. The serious agenda, i.e. saying goodbye to the establishment through peaceful, civilized and normal elections is the main agenda facing our society, but that main agenda is distorted and becomes a different agenda. Mayors change, chiefs of police change, headquarters are established and managed by the National Assembly Speaker who for some reason has to resign. So the society is distracted with issues that society should not care for at all in a normal country.