Something that is usually called Post-Election Processes has started inRussia. People with opposition ideas gather in squares and express their protest against the election procedure and results – they are arrested, tried etc. The future developments can be different, depending on how inclined to shedding blood the establishment is and how adventurous the opposition is. Certainly, people have reasons for protest – in the CIS countries, establishments organize and hold elections and it is natural that they will do whatever it takes to reproduce themselves. Why should I organize something, which I will not “win?” In the European countries and the US, governments hold elections and it is neither an Avarayr nor a Sardarapat for anyone; it is an ordinary, commonplace process to elect a temporary administration and a temporary legislation body for 4-5 years. In this instance, when people take to the streets in Moscow and say that the election was rigged, they are only partially right. Because no one can say whether, for example, Zyuganov or Prokhorov really won and Putin was declared the president. It would be more correct to say that the election as such did not take place. When there is an absolute lord and master of the country who allows other candidates to aspire to the office of the president (and forbids some others), and those candidates know quite well that they will not achieve anything and citizens understand quite well who is the tsar that will not allow anyone to approach the throne, such an event cannot be called an election. Writer and publicist Viktor Shenderovich has found a more appropriate word for that “competition” – i.e. Paralympics – when healthy man has cut legs and hands of his rivals in advance.
The main difference from the Armenian election of 2008 is that post-election processes are not organized by former participants in the “electoral competition,” but those who are called “non-systemic opposition.” And this version is more operative, because Navalny, Yashin and Udaltsov have not bored Russians as much as Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky have. One cannot see new faces on the political stage of our country just yet – on our stage, there are basically those who have been in politics for 20 years this way or another.
The resemblance is that (let’s be realistic) changes in Armenia and Russia are possible only from above. However, they will be realized, only if there is strong pressure from “beneath.”
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
