Armenia, in reality, is not a parliamentary republic. Our governmental system is prime ministerial. In reality, this terminology does not matter at all. The three presidents of Armenia and the current Prime Minister were and are blessed with the same powers as the First Secretary of the Central Committee. They do not have any poles balancing their power (since 1995, the National Assembly with its obedient majority has a purely symbolic nature), there are no serious legal mechanisms to hold the leaders accountable and remove them from office. If you want to hand all of Armenia over to the enemy, if you want to sacrifice half the population, nothing will stop you from remaining in power.
But let’s imagine for a second that Armenia is truly a parliamentary republic, and people vote for a political party based on the party’s platform. If that were the case, 884,864 citizens of Armenia would have voted for My Step’s platform in 2018, which specifically says the following about the Artsakh issue: “The people of Artsakh, in accordance with international laws and principles and the right to self-determination, our steps are the following:
- The continuous implementation of the exclusively peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict;
- The recognition of Artsakh as the main party in the conflict’s settlement process and ensuring its involvement in negotiations;
- The reduction in violations of the ceasefire and the implementation of investigative mechanisms;
- The neutralization of external threats to the physical security of the people of Artsakh;
- Support for developing Artsakh’s international relations, free movement of the population, and humanitarian connections.”
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Now, please tell me which of these points have been implemented. Perhaps “the neutralization of external threats to the physical security of the people of Artsakh?”
Since none of these points have been implemented, and the situation is dire from all perspectives, according to classical political logic, no one should vote for My Step in the next elections. But there is no such thing as classical logic in Armenia. Of those 884,864 people, only a few dozen probably read the My Step party platform. Besides those few people, no one was truly interested in My Step or its platform (and the majority of people did not know the majority of those running on the My Step party ticket). They voted for Nikol Pashinyan because he was able to successfully implement the “Reject Serzh” project. And that success is still in place today regardless of the disaster the current government inflicted upon our country.
That is why I cannot exclude the possibility of Pashinyan’s party receiving the majority of votes even if Pashinyan were to resign, a transitional government were to be put in place, and snap elections were to be held. But only then will we be dealing with a ‘pure scientific experiment’ that will clearly show the maturity of our society.
Aram Abrahamyan
