“Now we’ll hold elections and see who is a real human being and who is just a despicable nobody.” This is the mindset with which the authorities are heading into the elections—and the way they are guiding public perception. I am convinced that this should not be the purpose of elections. Election results should not divide people into “humans” and “non-humans.” Even if X receives 99 percent and Y just 1 percent, that does not prove that the 1 percent are “dogs,” or “rabble,” or “zombies.” They are all citizens of Armenia—people, Armenians in the political sense—even if they have a different ethnic background. Treating political opponents as less than human is, of course, not unique to the authorities, but the signals of division undoubtedly come from Nikol Pashinyan, who seems unable to go a single day without scandal or confrontation.
In reality, I believe elections are about identifying citizens’ priorities. For me, those priorities are:
- constitutionality and the rule of law,
- democracy,
- national identity.
Under Pashinyan, the principle of legality is being blatantly violated. Out of dozens of examples, I will mention just two:
a) in elections, the main competitors are placed in deeply unequal conditions vis-à-vis the authorities, with the repressive apparatus working against them;
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b) the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are trying to manage and control the Armenian Apostolic Church—and Civil Contract even has a campaign plank about this.
For me, democracy is not about formal speeches from European podiums, but about a respectful, good-natured, and—yes, I will use the word—Christian attitude toward others. You can judge for yourselves how the authorities and the “pro-European” NGOs that serve them behave.
National identity, of course, is not something rigid or fixed once and for all. But it does imply that no one can claim that everyone—from Mesrop Mashtots onward—was wrong, and only they are right. Or suggest that we should build a state as if we had just emerged from an incubator.
You might ask: what about peace? I believe peace is possible only if there is a state. And without the first three prerequisites, there is no state.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
