ACNIS reView

In April-May 2018, hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets to reject the existing system. There is no doubt that the absolute majority of those citizens, at least in the beginning, pursued one goal: to get the newly elected Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan to resign at any cost. Initially, there was no other goal on the agenda of the rallies and marches, including the election of Nikol Pashinyan as Prime Minister. Even the main slogan of the gatherings “Take a step, reject Serzh” testified to that. In one word, we can record that the entire ideology of the above-mentioned events taking place in the domestic political life of Armenia in those days was based on the logic of rejection.

However, did the desire to reject just one person bring hundreds of thousands to the streets? Definitely not. RA citizens, by rejecting Serzh Sargsyan, were actually rejecting a whole vicious system, whose general embodiment and leader was the above-mentioned person. Apart from the latter, the criminal oligarchy, the PSB system, the phenomenon of “thieves”, total corruption, monopoly and other similar rotten phenomena were rejected. For the sake of justice, it must be admitted that the system had already completely exhausted itself and was no longer able to respond to any challenges facing the state.

Leaving aside the questions as to which political technologies and with the support of which forces Pashinyan managed to bring tens of thousands to the streets, we believe that the existing system was doomed to collapse, which was only a matter of time. Representatives of almost all classes of the Armenian public were dissatisfied with the “rules of the game” in the state, political, economic, cultural, educational and other spheres and considered the development of new rules a necessity.

It is needless to mention that the small caste interested in maintaining the existing system had started to crack. The intra-caste clashes and conflicts became more and more frequent, which further weakened the latter and made them unable to extend their political and economic power. Hardyuns, when tens of thousands of citizens led by Pashinyan took to the streets to reject the existing system, it was no longer able to fight back and defend itself. Thus, one can say that the system embodied by Serzh Sargsyan collapsed. A new political force came to power, which signaled the beginning of “New Armenia” at least at the level of announcements. Regardless of everything, the objective and subjective reasons for the collapse, it should be noted that the collapse of such a vicious system is a truly significant event, which creates favorable conditions for strengthening the state, strengthening it, economic growth, social reforms and, in general, the strengthening of statehood. Not wanting to overshadow what happened and the opportunities open to the state, let us state at once that all this is possible only and only in one case: when the collapsed old system is replaced by a new, better, viable one, when the old rules of the game are followed by new rules, otherwise, an incomprehensible and chaotic environment arises, the consequences of which can be extremely dangerous and cause great damage even to the foundations of statehood.

In the event that the collapse of the “old” is not combined with the construction of the “new”, a vacuum situation arises in all spheres of life, and the mania for filling and occupying overwhelms everyone and everything, regardless of the most important circumstance of having a point of view, a vision or not. The power that came to power, deprived of its own concept, strategy and a clear vision of the future of the state, gives the opportunity to the forces in the field (including those serving foreigners) to come up with a public initiative to fill the gap, each of which considers its version the only correct and irreplaceable way. The result is that the absence of a strong, willful, intellectual government leads to the clash of interests of different forces, classes and social strata, which in turn divides the society into opposite poles (which can sometimes even be encouraged by the authorities willy-nilly). And this, as we have already mentioned, can seriously affect statehood.

We regret to mention that the current authorities could not create a new one during this one year under the conditions of the disintegration of the previous system, which is a consequence of the lack of clear ideas about the concept of state administration, the vision of the future, and the lack of systemic mechanisms aimed at their implementation. Let’s give some examples to make what has been said objective. Immediately after coming to power, Nikol Pashinyan uses every opportune and inopportune opportunity to announce that systemic corruption in Armenia has been overcome, however, as the subsequent development of cases showed (the criminal cases against the deputy minister of health, the head of the PPS and some other officials on charges of corruption), this is not the case at all, because apart from loud statements, no real, practical steps have been taken by the new authorities, no mechanism has been developed to combat systemic corruption. in the direction of eliminating and overcoming its consequences. The same applies to Pashinyan’s statements on monopolies. here again, no realistic steps, no new tools, draft laws, packages have been developed to exclude monopolies in various branches of the economy, their new emergence. Moreover, no significant steps have been taken to establish new rules of the game in the economy (mainly through laws and government decisions), which were supposed to protect small and medium-sized businessmen from the “former” oligarchs who have become big businessmen, even in some cases the logical opposite has been done. The inability of the new authorities is particularly acutely expressed in the Artsakh issue, where the latter, despite their statements, are not able to introduce any innovation or systemic change. The situation is the same in all other areas.

Thus, the analysis of the one-year term of office of the new members allows us to conclude that they have neither the necessary will nor sufficient mental potential to create a new one instead of the previous destroyed system. That is why some of them, even in the presence of some governors, prefer to move with the “inertia of the former”. Listen to Lena Nazaryan’s call.

Hayk Paityan