After it was announced that snap parliamentary elections would take place on June 20th, the domestic political agenda in Armenia changed. It seems as though the humiliating defeat in war, the loss of the majority of Artsakh, the threat facing border communities, and the casualties, wounded, captives, and refugees were forgotten. The political arena focused on the elections, Electoral Code, political parties, and their participation.
This surprising change in priorities of topics being discussed is, of course, is in the best interests of the authorities; life is going on as though nothing happened.
The small pro-government parties are particularly enthusiastic as they see an opportunity to gain several seats in parliament as a result of this election. These parties, of course, do not admit that they are pro-government, but they are betrayed by rhetoric. What is the best way to please the government? Well, of course, by cursing the former regime and taking the corpse of the former regime out of some faraway ‘cellar’ and attacking it with all the force of justified anger in hopes that the Prime Minister will appreciate that and give them a few mandates.
Those political parties will also ‘criticize’ the authorities, and we can already predict why. They will say that it was necessary to fire all the judges who were working until 2018 and appoint judges ‘loyal to the revolution,’ imprison Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan, and a few other members of the ‘former regime’ for a long time, deprive the wealthy of their assets and, particularly, mansions, and use that money to purchase weapons, close all opposition media outlets, etc. I believe that all of those suggestions are appealing to the people, and I don’t rule out the possibility that Pashinyan will ‘modestly’ accept that criticism and say, “Yes, my dear friends, I was too kind and democratic, but during my next term, I will be much more demanding. We must put an end to this velvet attitude!”
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The entire problem is that this agenda of the authorities and lumpens has nothing to do with the challenges facing Armenia that have to do with our defeat in war. But it is even worse that the pre-election agenda of the opposition, although it is tied to these challenges by name, has nothing to do with these challenges in reality since it is mostly based on the beliefs of ‘treason’ and ‘conspiracy.’ To claim that Pashinyan agreed to hand over Artsakh with Aliyev in the elevator shows that the opposition is completely missing the fatal mistakes the government made in the domestic and foreign policy arena. However, since no one is speaking about the true mistakes, there is no guarantee that the opposition politicians will not make the same mistakes when they come to power.
There is a deep lack of an emotionless and pragmatic approach that is free of labels and populism. However, I have not lost hope that someone will have that approach.
Aram Abrahamyan
