I expressed my negative attitude toward Raffi Hovhannisyan’s hunger strike on the very first day of that protest. No one explained why one cannot put up the same struggle with the same (or even higher) intensity in that same Freedom Square, eating normally. I don’t understand the vague cultural and moral reasons. Threatening to end one’s own life in order to solve political issues beats me too. As far as I know, no one has gone on a hunger strike, demanding to be declared president or to hold a snap parliamentary election or demanding the pivotal offices in the state. One can demand that without any kind of self-sacrifice.
However, on the other hand, the political forces, which didn’t succeed in a change of power in the past, hardly have a right to mock the Heritage Party leader and his methods of struggle. So if the Armenian National Congress (ANC) adheres to realpolitik, then this realism should apply first of all in its own activities. If I couldn’t come to power with my tactic and strategy – I didn’t achieve any real results – then it should restrict my possibilities of criticizing when some other figure employs other means in the same situation. Or at least I should admit that I was wrong when I had described that figure before the election, in particular, as “marginal” and “legitimizing the regime.” The lack of that retrospective reflection is one of the flaws of Levon Ter-Petrossian, the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM), and the ANC. Certainly, there are people in that environment who are capable of self-critical retrospective review – for example, Karapet Rubinyan or Hovhannes Igityan – and it is no accident that they like the movement led by Raffi Hovhannisyan. Such people’s position, as far as I can tell, is the following: “We did that way, but it didn’t prove to be right, now we should perhaps do this way.” However, you will agree, if I say that the PANM mainstream is different; we were always right, both as the government and as the opposition, and every event that takes place in this country proves that our brilliant predictions were right.
According to that “presumption,” Raffi Hovhannisyan is sometimes subjected to inappropriate attacks, as the ANC representative of Gyumri did in our newspaper. If you know how one can overcome that impasse, tell us. If you don’t know, deal with the capital city council election and legitimize the illegitimate authorities of Yerevan, so to say.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
