Five parties from Armenia and one from Artsakh — the Republican Party of Armenia, “Heritage,” “Prosperous Armenia,” the Armenian National Congress, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and the Democratic Party of Artsakh — have issued a statement briefly presenting the deplorable state of democracy in Armenia and calling on their European partners to pay attention to this situation rather than engage in hypocrisy. I am confident that other opposition forces share this view as well, particularly “Strong Armenia” and “Wings of Unity,” which, upon entering parliament, will establish relevant ties in Europe. In itself, it is encouraging that political forces with different ideologies, different paths, and numerous contradictions have come forward with such a statement.
I hope that this cooperation will continue over the next month, because today it is clear that Pashinyan can reproduce his power only through unprecedented falsifications, the groundwork for which has already been laid in the form of political repression.
Therefore, the goal of the united efforts of opposition parties should be to expose and explain the falsifications of the authorities. The Civil Contract party, as well as those parties that have entered the electoral contest not to pass into parliament but to discredit Pashinyan’s opponents (fortunately, their ratings are low), will, among other accusations, voice the traditional “argument”: “what about when you were in power…”. The Armenian National Congress (the Pan-Armenian National Movement), Prosperous Armenia, the Republican Party, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation have, to varying degrees, indeed contributed in the past to elections not being fair.
They should accept this accusation calmly — first, because the current authoritarian bacchanalia cannot be compared with any previous period. For example, in the past, representatives of the ruling force did not threaten voters that if they came to Armenia, they would be arrested at Zvartnots Airport. Nor were criminal cases ever initiated by “law enforcement” based on a Facebook post by the country’s top leader.
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Second, now everyone, including the “former” authorities, has the opportunity to correct their mistakes, because this time the reproduction of power would be disastrous.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
