“They should go to prison, they should have no money. I’m not naive,” Nikol Pashinyan declared from the parliamentary podium, speaking about Robert Kocharyan’s actions.
Nikol Pashinyan is, of course, not naive. Or, if he is naive at all, it is only when it comes to processes unfolding beyond Armenia’s borders, where, among the sharks of global geopolitics, Pashinyan is rather modest and restrained.
Inside Armenia, he is not naive, and it would be nothing short of naive to entertain even the slightest doubt about that. Instead, he continues to make his main political bet on preserving his domestic power and political position by relying on those who are prepared to relish, with a sense of physical and even spiritual gratification, everything Nikol Pashinyan does to the so-called “former” authorities. And since the number of these genuinely naive—or, rather, convinced naive—people is quite large, Pashinyan continues to place his principal political bet on them.
The whole question is: what is Pashinyan playing now, as he once again places his bet from the National Assembly podium while presenting the government’s program? Is this merely a warm-up, a way of staying in shape, or is Nikol Pashinyan making yet another bet that he has entered a new political “casino”?
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The problem is that, as experience has shown, in such cases Nikol Pashinyan tries to fire up his electorate with the “former authorities” theme, satisfy the appetite for spectacle among those segments of the public that relish political drama, and, at the same time, expand the ranks of those becoming disillusioned with the political process through yet another heated round of the “former versus current” game. The purpose is to absorb the potential losses that inevitably arise whenever Nikol Pashinyan enters the geopolitical “casino” with his “traditional bet.”
Hakob BADALYAN
