A few hours after the “declaration of new Armenia” yesterday, Raffi Hovhannisyan, you could say, basically suffered his first defeat as the opposition movement’s leader; by the way, he is the figure who ended his oath with the following lines: “We, the proud citizens of new Armenia, will build our real fatherland in the shadow of sacred Ararat, from where our brothers and sisters will not flee, where all Armenians return, where there is law, where there is a future, there is an elected president, happy people; that day is not remote, that day is today.” However, the 9th day of April 2013 will not go down in our history as a result of the government’s criminal actions. Yes, the situation heated up, became tense, there was a squash, a few people were taken in and were injured, but yesterday the government defeated Raffi Hovhannisyan. The latter showed that being the “elected president” who promises not to abandon the people, not having experience of leading a movement – this is not a tragedy; experience is gained in the course of time – he doesn’t have a clear political agenda, a goal, short-term and long-term programs. One cannot “feed” a movement with phrases like “this is our country,” “this is our city,” “26 Baghramyan belongs to the people,” “government belongs to the people” for long. Those are kind words, which people like, but even those people realize that political struggle is not put up with those, and that is the very reason why yesterday evening they didn’t submit to Raffi Hovhannisyan’s will, and the latter was compelled to change the steps he had announced several times and to submit to the people’s demands. The post-election phase that started after the February 18 presidential election basically ended yesterday. However, it ended in Raffi Hovhannisyan’s defeat. Furthermore, one can surely say that R. Hovhannisyan lost his first chance as early as after his well-known meeting with Serzh Sargsyan. Because of unclearness or absence of a political agenda, he both lost a good opportunity that day and closed the door on such opportunities in the future. And now Raffi Hovhannisyan will hardly be taken seriously even by the current government, and the government will hardly consider a dialogue with him as an urgent matter. Certainly, except for the “general” who properly carried out his mission yesterday; he stood out for performing his duty not to allow new March 1, showing the whole arsenal of his abilities. Anyway, the only thing Raffi Hovhannisyan can do is to take concrete steps in forming an opposition movement. By the way, it should be done very quickly, in order that the part of society that voted for and trusted Raffi Hovhannisyan during the presidential election doesn’t seek consolation in other forces during the Yerevan City Council election. That is to say Raffi Hovhannisyan should start the work of finding his niche in the opposition camp from scratch.
Emma GABRIELYAN
