This incident has happened during the 1998 presidential elections, but it could have happened 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago. It can also happen on December 6 this year. In one of the villages, the village mayor had called one of the villagers to him whose son was arrested. The village mayor had told him, “Your son might get suspended for 2 years, and can be imprisoned for 10 years. It depends on you. If the village votes “correctly”, your son will come home. Otherwise, you will not see him for 10 years.”
If you were in the villager’s place, what would you do? Maybe you would complain the oppositions, human rights defenders or the journalists, knowing that there will be no benefit from it, and the mayor, especially the law enforcers would “completely refute.” But it is more likely that you would quietly go from door to door around the village, would plead your fellow villagers to vote “as appropriate,” as your son’s fate depends on them. How would you behave if you were one of the villagers? Again, the likelihood is very high that with your vote you would try to save your neighbor’s son.
Pay attention that in this case there is no beating, no torture, no ballot stuffing, nor even election bribe. Certainly, there are signs of a crime, which, however, is quite difficult to prove. There is also an evidence that our legal and judicial system is subject to the political interests of the government. Do we have the right to demand heroic efforts from people for such cases to withstand the compulsion of the state machine? I think at this point we have no right. Nor to blame these people for “servility”.
Here I mentioned only one of the methods of forging the elections (referendums). In reality, the number of these methods is thousand, if not tens of thousands. As to how we can destroy this tradition formed over 20 years, to be honest, I do not have the final answer to this question. As once a wise man has said, I am not young enough to know so many things. Some people say that it is necessary to carry out a revolution so that people would come who have “political will” and would not go for such methods. But it seems to me that if over the 20 years different authorities did not have such a will, then there is no guarantee that someone will take it. On the contrary, the experience shows that even the one who had come to power with revolution is more inclined to be guided by the “revolutionary necessity” (“We have led the people to overthrow the Evil, so we …”), rather than with the law.
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Apparently, it is necessary to begin with eliminating the fear from the people and the distrust towards tomorrow. But this is necessary not for doing a revolution once, but for living with dignity for years and decades.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
