If you meet the “discussers” of the draft of the Constitution tomorrow in any club, who would say that this is a provision in this draft under which the aliens should come to Armenia and shave the heads of all citizens of Armenia, do not be surprised. For the human imagination has no limits. The “discussers” have already “discovered” in this draft that all men should undergo an operation on gender change, that the Diaspora Minister organizes the trips of the president, and that the police should open a fire over the protesters. Any ordinary sentence (let’s assume, “Women and men are equal”), which already exists in the constitutions of many other countries, receives approximately the following reaction, “Ah, what they have written, Oh, what a disgrace.” Sometimes, I begin suspecting that this is the government’s “trolling”, an attempt to divert from the real risks of the draft.
And the risk is that there are no political parties in Armenia and the parliamentary system based thereon will not have any stock of firmness. The problem, therefore, is not that this draft provides RPA’s autocracy. The problem is that the “RPA” is a conditional name, it can be replaced by a Communist party, PANM or PAP party. How many minutes are necessary for the corrupt officials or an “entrepreneur-parliamentarian” to replace the signboard reading “RPA” by another signboard? How many hours are required for them to be accustomed to the new “papas”? When the first figure is the president, he has the chance to operate apart from this gray mass, when the first figure is the prime minister chosen amongst them, he will be overly dependent on the illiterate, unprincipled, solely guided by business- interests “swamp”, whether it will be called an “RPA” or something else. Of course, this dependence is possible to be mutual if the “papa” is the prime minister.
The draft of the constitutional amendments, as I understand, is called to prevent the possible conflict between the president and the parliamentary majority, which, as you recall, once was “resolved” by the October 27 terrorism. But the proposed system can suggest a similarly profound conflict of business-interests among the majority, and the method to solve this conflict is not visible.
Everything comes from the fact that there is no political and partisan system in Armenia. There is a corrupt nomenclature, and it is absolutely not important how it is called, it may even have several names. And there is a former nomenclature, which is called by various “opposition” names. They together created and developed the current oligarchic system, be it called a presidential or a parliamentary.
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… I have one more doubt. The opposition spends tremendous strength and energy to overthrow the constitutional amendments. After failing, the government will say, “Oh, you wanted a presidential system, here you are.” And will easily win the presidential elections.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
