It is hard to include the Heritage Party in the list of big, massive parties, which lead the people to the bright future with elevated slogans. However, the party has an important advantage, by which it stands out from other political forces – it always stands by the citizens’ side, not discriminating between those who are famous and those who are infamous among the society members, between political allies and rivals. One can see members of the small Heritage faction wherever human rights are violated, wherever people protest against it. Perhaps you would say that it is more a function of a human rights group, rather than a political institution. Theoretically, it is really so. However, presently the people are a little tired of the thing that is called “politics” in Armenia, when the opposition – the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), the National Democratic Union (NDU), the Constitutional Rights Union (SIM) etc. and now, the Armenian National Congress (ANC) – utter the same commonplace blames for emigration, “stealing” and “sucking blood of the people” and the establishment responds to that with the same stock arguments and… continues stealing. This type of “politics” is, in my opinion, obsolete; banal words have lost their meaning and have become ceremonial.
It is the time for the society to take on tasks that are sometimes small, but, nonetheless, exact and realizable. The release of the prisoners of conscience was such a task – hats off to the ANC, other forces, all normal citizens for realizing it. Sapping their supporters’ energy with the fruitless slogan “immediate resignation” for months after it and then preparing for regular parliamentary and presidential elections is called “losing the momentum” in the chess language. E.g., when you move a rook or a queen forward and your opponent “drives them away” with a pawn, you are compelled to move the pieces back to their places, but the opponent gains a better position.
The Heritage Party tries to make progress with its limited abilities in “small deeds” whether they are environmental, economic, legal or educational. I am convinced, for example, that if we manage to prevent setting up booths in Mashtots Avenue, it will encourage the society more, than shouting overemotional slogans for months.
Yesterday the congress of the Heritage Party took place, during which the most interesting speech was made by Karapet Rubinyan who is not a member of any party. He said that the opportunity of landmark change seemed to be lost, but gradual, evolutional development also required stubborn struggle. Perhaps even more stubborn.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
