Today turns another page in the history of Armenian parliamentarianism. It is the first time in the history of the third republic that the National Assembly will dissolve and it is the first time that snap elections will take place. That is how things usually go after a revolution. The Russian Bolsheviks, for example, dissolved the state Duma and put the working-agricultural “Soviet” (council) system in place. And in 1993, Yeltsin, with the help of tanks, dissolved the Grand Assembly and reinstated the state Duma. Although the name “National Assembly” will remain the same, the people in it will be different. The head legislative body will enjoy the trust of the people (at least for a while).
The people in it will change, yes. But its set-up? We have seen two types of parliamentarianism- 1) the gathering type from 1990-1995, and 2) the type with protest elements, from 1988-1990 and from 1995-2018. In the second type, the submissive “active” majority was against the “democratic tribunes). There were times when there were only two tribunes- Ashot Manucharyan and Khachik Stamboltsyan. The “active ones” (in more modern terms, the group of oligarchs and the ruling elite) are an unstable group, because when the face of politics changes, the group flips to the strong side. Naturally, it does this “for the interests of the state.”
I trust that, if not in December, during the next parliamentary elections, there will be a third path and we will come out of the modern, typical parliamentarian “main path,” where there will be no protests, but debates can be strong and uncompromising. However, the people debating will always remain restrained, argumentative, and respectful. It’s important that people fight for their ideals. How they do that is equally as important.
Yesterday, lawyer Avetik Ishkhanyan showed me something he translated from Soviet Russian philosopher Grigory Pomerantsi. “Satan begins his work as an angel, entering the fight by doing holy deeds. He then turns everything to dust- people, systems. The spirit of hatred lasts forever in favor of the fight for justice. And it is because of him that evil has no end. When I understood all of this, I became convinced that the spirit of debate is more important than what it consists of.”
Aram Abrahamyan
