I have significant reservations about all kinds of “lustrations,” “vetting,” and “transitional justice.” So, as it is understood in Armenia, under those words, I see just revenge, seeding of enmity, through which the “current” and their supporters try to assert themselves at the expense of the “former.”
I remember a funny episode; when I interviewed a high-ranking official representing the new government in the summer of 2018, one of the latter’s revolutionary fans, who probably didn’t like my questions, wrote a comment below: “Journalists should also be subjected to lustration.”
No matter how much a “steel mandate” or swinging a hammer appeals to the lumpen masses; no matter how many the representatives of that mass complain about why their favorite prime minister allows “representatives of looters” to voice a critical word, all this has nothing to do with real reforms. As propaganda, populism, and demagoguery, it is excellent; as politics, it is harmful.
But it is also wrong to take the other extreme not to change anything and to allow the previous elite to reproduce, carrying flags of a different color. Some people need to be judged, but not for expressing this or that point of view, supporting this or that, even not being a fanatic, but for violating written (only written and valid) laws.
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And first of all, the judges should be judged. In the summer of 2018, an unprecedented attack on the judicial system took place at the Prime Minister’s call. But the goal was not for judges to work within the law but for them to carry out the political directives of the executive branch. In five years, the government has achieved chiefly that goal, and now Mnatsakan Martirosyan is the symbol of the judicial system of the “new Armenia.”
But suppose the next government wants to not engage in populism and demagoguery again, this time choosing the Civil Contract as a target but aiming to reform the state system. In that case, it should seriously deal with judges; to avoid being in a situation where the prime minister’s son dictates the court’s decision.
It is a fundamental truth that the basis of democracy is the division of powers into wings. Suppose the executive, legislative, and judicial authorities are in the hands of one person. In that case, the “Armenian Forum for Democracy” can be held daily, but the autocracy will remain as it was.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
