Interview with political analyst Edward Antinyan.
“The parliamentary opposition, as the discussions of the government’s five-year plan showed, associates the basic processes with April 2018, when the president’s powers are over and the main actor becomes the prime minister in Armenia. There were predictions about state and governmental shocks. Do you think there will be tension or not?
“For the first time in the history of the Third Republic, the government did not see any danger of reproduction, and it is also confident that there will be no governmental shocks in 2018, after the termination of Serzh Sargsyan’s powers as president. Undoubtedly, Karen Karapetyan has been appointed prime minister as a result of the agreements reached with the president, and whether he will continue to hold office after 2018 or will have another status – it will also be agreed. Consequently, the scenario that some oppositionists, as you mentioned, are waiting for, to open a “front” for their activities: in 2018, Prime Minister’s issue will lead to governmental shocks, which will activate the opposition, leading to state shocks, our enemy will take an advantage of it and the border tension will increase dramatically, which will return to the country with a great intensity and cause an explosion, although they say that nothing is ruled out in politics, I will dare to be negligent and say, that I rule out such a development.
I don’t mean that it is good that it happened, I have always been for the change. Even in the most prosperous countries of the world, political teams are constantly changing through elections, as a result of which also the most effective governments, and those countries only benefit from it. Unfortunately, our political process from the very beginning did not take the right way. For years they have said that our people do not have the patience to wait long, and it is necessary to achieve a regime change in the next few days through revolution, but it only disappointed “impatient” people for 25 years, whereas during so many years, in case of initiating reforms “from above”, in an evolutionary way, with the support of the public, as well as the constant pressure, now we could raise our country to a qualitatively different level. And now, in case of defeat in the last national elections and absence of post-election protests, a large crowd of people favouring radical steps faced the fact: nothing was successful “from the bottom”, and still cannot accept the idea of tolerating “the upper”.
By the way, for the first time in about twenty-five years, for choosing personnel the authorities may not be guided by the principle: “Let him be stupid, be ours”, and now they can hire such figures in the public service, whose human and professional qualities are very important to the country, even if they have some disagreements with them. This strengthens the power, rather than weakening, as various minds move to a constructive discussion platform. Simply put, the ruling “fortress” is not in danger, in order to have a large number of “castle keepers” on their side, in the form of brute force, moreover, to spend tremendous resources to keep the “fortress invincible”. After all, it’s possible to solve so many problems in the country with those means, to create such favourable conditions for living and creating, that people engaging in creative work, would drastically reduce the number of dissatisfied. By the way, the recent national elections and post-election developments, more precisely, their absence, showed that there aren’t any leaders with enough resources, able to “besiege the fortress”, leading the public to such steps, anymore, and it is not clear when there will again be such”.
“But society is not happy with the authorities”.
“Yes, although the society is experiencing enormous dissatisfaction with their way of life and the policy pursued by the authorities, there was no attempt to succeed in any cost through post-electoral shock, or by supporting the leaders ready to do anything to win. In doing so, our society helped the authorities in such degree, that the latter feeling themselves obligated to do something substantive for our country and people, finally to bring the developments in the country to normalcy. It is necessary to realize that this card-blanch given by the public to the authorities is not long-term, it cannot be abused. And if this situation makes the self-proclaimed authorities more indifferent to the pain of the society, it can push the people to the radical path, which is not favourable, in our complicated region, in the current geopolitical tense state, in case of an unfinished war. Finally, if they assure that they are capable of carrying out reforms “from top”, at least as a first step, the society must see that first of all this “top” is being reformed, and this concerns not only the personnel, a qualitatively different approach should be manifested in government-society relationships, and it must be initiated by the authorities.
“You are talking about new approaches in personnel policy: do you mean the appointment of oppositionist Alexander Arzumanyan as Ambassador?”.
“I do not want to focus on that appointment, and consider a private case to be a proof of the policy pursued, rather to say a new situation has arisen an opportunity to demonstrate a new approach, and Alexander Arzumanyan’s appointment fits into that scenario.
To illustrate my point, let me bring a good example. Recently, US President George W. Bush was the most scandalous, because of his unbalanced and aggressive foreign policy, which was especially expressed by unnecessary military intervention in the internal affairs of this or that country. Therefore, after the Bush’s termination, the Republicans had no chance to win the elections. The main target of Democrat Barack Obama’s propaganda was the failure of the Republicans’ military policy, as a result, according to him, the US international prestige was significantly damaged. Obama won, but asked for the Bush administration’s Defence Minister, Robert Gates, to continue working for at least a year, so that they could prepare an experienced substitute of that calibre. Though they found the military policy to be wrong, the minister was so experienced that after his departure losses would have been more. As a result, they persuaded him to work not only for one but two years. This is the state mentality, which, unfortunately, is often missing in our country, probably because of being deprived of an independent state for a long time. Professionalism and organizational qualities are so important in the US, the world’s most powerful country with a population of about three hundred million, that the president, for the state’s sake, asks him to continue working, and we say: we are deprived of everything, or we have only few opportunities, the only valuable capital is our people’s intellectual potential, but as we look around, can we say that intellect and professionalism are valued in us?”.
“The opposition explains its defeat in the elections with massive vote buying. Bribery, indeed, was common. Does it justify the opposition?”.
“No doubt there was a vote buying, which is a criminal offense, in which the law enforcement should be engaged. But let me also say that in one of the non-governmental organizations I conducted 93 observation missions at the electoral districts, and it was purely to see the situation from within and evaluate it objectively. That’s why we did not come up with a statement, and I state about that a few months after the elections, when you asked me about it. Voters in the electoral districts were absolutely free in their will. And if those who disagree with electoral results say that the results of the elections are worth 10,000 drams, then the people expressed their attitude to the radical opposition, meaning that they do not worth even 10.000 drams, because they had the chance to be bought, even by several, and vote for whomever they wanted, but they did not vote for radical oppositionists.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
