Who can stop Joe Biden if the US President makes wrong, destructive decisions for his country? A conventional “Civic Contact member,” that is, a person who speaks in populist-demagogic clichés, will answer this question with the “proud” statement: “The people of the USA.”
But the experience of over 250 years of that country shows that the well-known “checks and balances” mechanisms are placed within the state system, through which the political and state elite can correct the country’s leader if he goes the wrong way. Those mechanisms are known; in particular, Congress and the Supreme Court play a restraining role.
Who can stop Putin, Erdogan, and Aliyev? Again, the conventional “representative of the Civil Contract” will say: “The people of Russia (Turkey, Azerbaijan) have elected their leader, and they will change him if he goes the wrong way.” But firstly, the expression “elected” is quite controversial in the existing systems in those countries; secondly, even if they “have elected,” it is not enough. The first persons of the state must be deprived of the possibility of making arbitrary decisions.
Today’s Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan policy primarily leads to the genocide of the Artsakh people and the loss of Armenia’s sovereignty. It is apparent to any more or less literate person, including the representatives of this government. Let’s not go deeper into what their motivation is. In which case “checks and balances” mechanisms can be created? Only in one case, if the government changes through elections and a stable tradition of such a change of government is formed.
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Revolutions, “revolutionary committees,” and “tribunals” will take us in the exact opposite direction: a more uncontrollable and “unaccountable” government will be formed. The right approach is for the current and future authorities (what is called incumbent in the political science literature) to lose several times in the elections and feel that they are replaceable. If you know that you will not rule forever, then you voluntarily create a mechanism to correct your mistakes because then your goal is not to sit on the chair forever but to make as few fatal mistakes as possible.
That is why elections at all levels are essential, no matter how skeptical citizens are about them. In particular, if Civil Contract and its satellites lose in the Yerevan Council of Elders elections, it will be a specific impetus for democratic reforms (“transit”).
In 2019, the opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu won the mayoral elections of Istanbul. The government annulled the election results, but the exact figure won the new elections. And in December 2022, Imamoglu was sentenced to two years and seven months in prison; he was also banned from politics. “Democratic transit” did not take place in Turkey.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
