WHO CAN OPEN THE LOOP
HAKOB BADALYAN
Story from Lragir.am News:
Published: 17:15:54 – 07/11/2011
The election cycles in Armenia, or the related activities of the
political forces remind a vicious circle or a loop. Once we view the
elections since 1995-1996, we will notice that names, individuals,
faces changed while the content is the same, and the governments of
all times said the same thing in the same way, and the oppositions
of all times also said the same thing in the same way. Not in the
absolute sense, of course. There were changes and there will be more.
After all, age and time always did and will have their influence.
However, our activists get older while the political sphere shaped
by them does not mature.
The political sphere has recently appeared to understand this, and
efforts to open this vicious circle have been made. In this sense,
the elections in 2007-2008 were quite illustrative of this. In 2007,
for instance, the Heritage Party tried to distinguish itself by some
innovations in both manner and content of election campaign. In the
same year, the government introduced the MIAK Party which also tried
to act as a new type of political force, at first sight bringing
up not so popular but very important issues, such as transition to
contractual army, or other issues with a liberal philosophy.
In 2008, the ARF Dashnaktsutyun tried some innovation, holding
primaries. The ARF-D members were asked to make a choice between Vahan
Hovhannisyan and Armen Rustamyan to nominate a presidential candidate.
However, they failed to choose one of them until Armen Rustamyan
withdrew and stated to support Hovhannisyan. Well, the party was not
used to primaries, and the party members thought if they choose one
of them, they will not have the face to look at the other.
Apparently, the Armenian political forces do not succeed in their
innovations because they make them out of political planning rather
than inner belief, they make them for addressing certain political
issues rather than to mature the political sphere.
So, before the next election stage, the Armenian political sphere
has found itself in a loop, and the only so-called innovation is
that the loop has been diagnosed and defined as the triangle of the
three presidents.
Logically, “diagnosis” must be followed by treatment. Currently
the definition is in place: the problem is the dominance of the
“three presidents”. Consequently, the political developments must be
withdrawn from the triangle of the three presidents.
Essentially, however, this triangle has not been imposed on Armenia.
It has occurred in the so-called natural way. It reflects the
modern reality in Armenia, its early and non-early historical and
psychological roots which have personified the Armenian politics
to an absolute extent. And here, already, a loop of one, or two,
three, maybe four or five persons may occur. The difference is not
big because the problem is not arithmetic but the withdrawal of the
process from the persons, to ensure that persons maintain it, rather
than it maintains persons.
Levon Ter-Petrosyan, for instance, had almost opened the loop in
2007-2008, having his personality serve the public. Later, however,
the situation changed, the problems changed too, and thereby the
correlation changed, and a great part of the society set to serve
the personality policy.
One of the main issues of the parliamentary elections in 2012 will
be the U-turn of this correlation, returning from person or persons
to the public, opening the loop, withdrawing the process from the
“triangle”, which may be helpful to the triangle too because it will
stop being something like the Bermuda triangle, relieving the weight
lying on the three triangles.
Does the Armenian political sphere have this potential? Are there
forces which can take on the mission of offering a new political
activity, a new political text and a new political setting?
From: Baghdasarian