Government belongs to the people. That nice phrase is written in the constitution of Armenia, as well as the constitutions of tens of other countries around the world. What does it mean? They say, along with other things, that it means that the government is legitimately elected by the people, that the people have formed the government. Very well. The Supreme Council in 1990 and Levon Ter-Petrossian in 1991 were elected as a result of free and fair elections. Can we thus claim that the government in 1990-1995 belonged to the people? What is the reason then for the fact that in this period, the majority of the people would insult and curse the power that be in the same way, with the same words and with the same accusations (“they have robbed,” “they have stolen,” “they have left us to starve” etc.) as they insult and curse today. Why would Ashot Manucharyan, a member of the Karabakh Committee, call Levon Ter-Petrossian, the legitimately elected president, Vano Siradeghyan, the Minister of the Interior appointed by him, and Babken Ararktsyan, the equally legitimate speaker of the parliament, “murderer,” “rogue,” and “prostitute,” and around 20 thousand people gathered in Freedom Square – surely representatives of the people – would just roar with pleasure when they would hear those curses in the summer of 1994? Didn’t the people know that government belonged to them? Or perhaps they knew, but they didn’t care for this fact at all, furthermore, they were not happy about that. Or another version – government didn’t belong to the people at that time either. Because at that time, as now, the oppositionists would state that the task of the people is to get rid of the gangster government as soon as possible, otherwise, the country would collapse. Why can you get rid of the government that belongs to you? Let us understand in that light what the current oppositionists mean by saying that government must be returned to the people. Raffi Hovhannisyan meant by that the following: Serzh Sargsyan had to come to Freedom Square and hand over government to the people, i.e. him, since the people had elected him, Raffi Hovhannisyan, president. It was not hard to predict that it would not happen, and now we should wait and see what the Heritage Party will offer. Levon Ter-Petrossian has a different plan of returning government to the people. According to this plan, Gagik Tsarukyan breaks away from the oligarchy and carries out a bourgeois democratic revolution, along with the Armenian National Congress (ANC), as a result of which the high bourgeoisie will get rid of the bonds of the gang rule. It is hard for me to say how it will contribute to democracy, even if we suggest just theoretically that one part of the oligarchs will start to struggle against the other. In 1998, two silovik ministers and the Prime Minister “broke away” from the government and carried out a coup d’état. Government didn’t return to the people due to that.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
