Do not reopen old wounds, do not discredit one another, do not scatter the votes
“You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24). With these words, the Lord speaks about our tendency to misplace our priorities. The same is true of political forces.
In theory, I would support a situation in which our citizens choose between liberal, conservative, and our three traditional parties, as political analyst Arsen Gasparyan proposes. If Armenia were in a more or less stable condition, I would gladly vote for a conservative party (of course, a modern, progressive conservatism). Incidentally, the conservatives I would want to support simply do not exist in Armenia’s political landscape today.
But that vision is not about the present. It is an image of a future, “peaceful” life. Right now, we are at “war.” The likelihood of external military hostilities in the coming months is not particularly high—for now, Turkey and Azerbaijan, the adversaries of our statehood, are satisfied with the “soft power” being used against us. But inside the country, there is a “war,” whose author and regular instigator is Pashinyan and his team. He constantly mobilizes his (in my view, shrinking) electorate, as well as the security and law-enforcement structures, to fight against “the former,” “internal enemies,” “foreign agents,” clergy he dislikes, and those deemed alien to the regime.
Read also
In essence, Pashinyan is waging a struggle against statehood and the constitutional order, allowing himself legal lawlessness and arbitrariness whose scale and brazenness are truly “unprecedented” in the history of the Third Republic.
In this extremely dangerous situation, which poses a direct threat to statehood, talking about ideological disagreements or old and new personal scores is the equivalent of “straining out gnats.” Either the opposition forces do not understand what awaits us if Pashinyan remains in power, or they do understand it—but their priorities lie elsewhere.
If the opposition genuinely wants to rid the state of Pashinyan, then in the coming months it must do everything possible to ensure that opposition votes are not scattered in the upcoming elections. That means not asserting oneself at the expense of opposition partners, not discrediting one another, and not siphoning votes from each other. If they sense—or conclude through research—that their electorate largely overlaps with that of another opposition force, then they should not tear that segment away from one another. On the contrary, they should unite and form an alliance.
If the electorates are clearly different (for example, those of the National Democratic Alliance and the Republican Party of Armenia—I do not have specific sociological data, I am simply assuming), then there is no need to reopen old wounds before the elections, and basic political decency should be maintained as much as possible. And if they sense or know that their party will not pass the 4 percent threshold, they should not put on a show pretending otherwise—let them unite with a “viable” party they prefer.
I do not think any of this amounts to some kind of political-technological revelation. For any reasonably experienced and rational person, all of this is obvious. But representatives of our political forces also operate under a strong emotional background: “I can’t stand this one,” “I can’t shake his hand,” and so on. From a political standpoint, this is kindergarten-level thinking. For example, I may personally detest someone—but a politician does not have that luxury.
What worries Civil Contract members the most is consultations among opposition forces. Did you see how they reacted to the ARF–ANC meeting? I believe such contacts among opposition parties should be intensified, and, where possible, publicly announced.
By the way, my journalist colleagues, probably out of inertia, continue to present the Armenian National Congress through the figure of Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Meanwhile, in the upcoming elections, the Congress’s leading figure is Levon Zurabyan. He is the party’s candidate for prime minister.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
