The as yet moral victory of Raffi Hovhannisyan in the election, as well as the developments connected with that victory, has prevented Armenian politically active society as much as possible from focusing its attention on another interesting and important event. At the most
heated moment of the post-election period, the movement called Armenian National Congress became a party with the same name. Moreover, it didn’t just become a party; it actually occupied the place of the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM), taking everything from the PANM, except for the name, which no one, except for Ararat Zurabyan who has already stated that if they destroy the PANM, he will establish a new one, needs. Let us wait and hope. We mentioned that Armenian society was busy with Raffi Hovhannisyan when the ANC party was being established, and that latest extraordinary congress of the PANM was not paid particular attention to, and those who had initiated the establishment of the ANC party liked that, because those who paid attention and talked about the congress basically treated the fact of turning the ANC into a party negatively. My opinion is quite the opposite. It is praiseworthy that the ANC asserted by this step without hesitation that the Armenian National Congress had stopped being a movement and a coalition of parties and would be a party from that moment on. The PANM was also a movement once, and in 1988, it absolutely unexpectedly and suddenly became a party. However, it is an absolutely different case. At that time, the PANM hadn’t stopped being a movement and turning into a party and eliminating the movement, it imposed partisanship on itself and obviously diminished its significance. The Pan-Armenian National Movement actually turned into the PANM and thus the foundation of a “country club” and a “sect” was laid. Since becoming a party, the name PANM has been evoking mainly negative emotions in our society. The case of the ANC is an absolutely different one. Becoming a party, the ANC asserted a fait accompli, moreover, asserted quite rashly, because there was no time to be wasted, and the post-election developments related to Raffi Hovhannisyan were already under way. And in order to somehow participate in those developments or respond, the ANC had to first transform and gain a new face, because the ANC coalition with its remnants was not perceived as a coalition and a movement anymore, and most probably, in case of joining (or not joining) the developments related to Raffi, it would have split even more. In my opinion, those facts were the reason why the ANC rushed headlong to declare itself a party, giving rise to manifold new issues and questions by that. The main and most important one of those is the following; what status will the People’s Party of Armenia (PPA), Hunchakians and others who haven’t withdrawn from the ANC yet enjoy. So will the ANC be both a coalition and a party at the same time. Agreeing with the idea that everything is possible on the Armenian political stage, I doubt that it will last long. That issue could concern the ANC leadership in the past, whereas now the ANC can breathe freely, relying on itself from now on. Moreover, now the parties who are members of the ANC coalition will feel out of place and will leave the ANC silently from now on. I am first of all talking about Demirchyan’s PPA, which, being in the ANC in the past few years, has lost face more than even the one- or two-man parties of the ANC. The PPA will hardly be able to restore its reputation, particularly given the fact that it is powerful neither financially nor in terms of modern political technologies. The considerable amount of votes won by Raffi Hovhannisyan in the presidential election showed that not only money is crucial in Armenian elections, and parties and politicians have a lot of possibilities in terms of political technologies, and the
ANC was the first to sense and realize that and immediately rebuilt and transformed itself. Thanks to Raffi Hovhannisyan, we all know that even on the stereotyped Armenian political stage, one can show creativity, and most importantly, achieve success thanks to creativity and innovation. In terms of creativity and innovation, the ANC’s capacity certainly is incomparably limited, because only one man, Levon Ter-Petrossian, is entitled to be creative in the ANC. Certainly, Raffi Hovhannisyan is an undeniable and absolute authority in the Heritage Party too, but Raffi offers an opportunity to ordinary members of the Heritage Party to not only improvise independently, but also take on certain responsibility.
Voskan YEREVANTSI
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P.S. In any case, becoming the successor of the PANM, the ANC solved an issue very important for it; it is an issue of property, which is very important nowadays. And the ANC solved that issue quite easily and creatively.
