Yesterday Raffi Hovhannisyan talked in Freedom Square again. He made an emotional and honest speech in his style, a bit incoherently. One cannot convey the summary of what he said; there were hues of both disappointment (“I was defeated”) and optimism (“the struggle continues”). There was a part about commentators and editors who do nothing yet criticize. If it is also about me, frankly speaking, I don’t accept the criticism of doing nothing; I don’t seem to stand out for being particularly lazy. As for criticizing…
Being engaged in journalism for quite a long time, I have come to a simple conclusion that persons don’t matter very much; they are changeable and volatile. Phenomena and regularities are important; the repetition of the former allows one to speak about the latter. The phenomenon, which we claim to be presidential elections, repeated in 1996, 1998, 2003, 2008, and 2013 with minor changes. Therefore, we should talk not about good or bad people here and not even the rogue government, but rather certain regularities. In 4 out of these 5 so-called elections, Vazgen Manukyan, Stepan Demirchyan, and Levon Ter-Petrossian showed a standard post-election attitude – rallies, protests, movements etc. There is a regularity here too, after which the period of society’s disappointment would start (in 1996, foreign observers called it “frustration,” using their foreign word). And on the contrary, in 1998, Karen Demirchyan took an unconventional path, which aroused certain hopes in society, and those who didn’t want such hopes to be there organized the events of October 27.
Raffi Hovhannisyan also had an opportunity to show such an unconventional attitude. Firstly, during his post-election rallies, a consultation took place in the National Assembly Speaker’s office, during which one could have reached an agreement on establishing the constitutional amendments commission. Supposedly, the opposition would have had a casting vote in that commission. Should one have seized that opportunity, remaining opposition and demanding? I am sure yes. However, Raffi Hovhannisyan stated at a rally that what was going on in the parliament had nothing to do with him. The second opportunity was offered when Raffi Hovhannisyan wrote a letter containing proposals, and the president replied that he was ready to discuss those proposals with “pen and paper.” It was an ideal
situation for the negotiating parties, which the Heritage Party leader didn’t use again. Of course, it is obvious that if Mr. Hovhannisyan had taken such steps, the other oppositionists would have called him “hanger-on,” “stooge,” and “reprobate.” However, they call Raffi those things now anyway; there is no difference. Instead, one could have created a new situation when some supervisory mechanisms would have passed on to the opposition. And now we have what our Western colleagues call “frustration.”
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Therefore, Raffi Hovhannisyan also acted in accordance with the above-mentioned regularity.
Aram Abrahamyan
