There are historical moments when the external course of political events is deceptive.

It seems that the elections have ended, the mandates have been distributed, the post-election tension has passed, a relative calm has been established, the government is distributing positions, and the political forces are rearranging themselves to find the way of their future struggle.

But in fact, under the cover of silence, something completely different is happening in the depths of the earth. The foundation of the state is cracking. After June 7, Armenia reached such a dramatic milestone.

The created situation is a simultaneous crisis of legitimacy, legal state and statehood. And when these three crises coincide, the state begins to exist more in external forms than in its internal content.

Today’s government holds in its hands the state administration and power system, the courts and the parliamentary majority, but this control is not yet statehood. The state exists as long as the power rests on trust, justice and awareness of the common destiny. When these foundations are lost, the government turns into a self-preservation machine that covers up its crisis of legitimacy with new repressions, criminal prosecutions of dissidents, and the spread of public fear. From that point on, repression is no longer a political choice, but the system’s main mode of survival.

However, not only the government is facing a crisis. The entire opposition field faces an equally crucial choice.

Parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forces should decide whether they are able to form a common platform and a common agenda of struggle, or whether they will take the path of decentralized resistance.

United struggle is certainly the way to consolidate power. But the decentralized struggle can also be effective if it does not turn into private ambitions, mutual neutralization and endless competition for the same audience.

It is not necessary that everyone be in the same structure, stand on the same stage or speak the same vocabulary. However, it is imperative that the independent agendas are synchronous, complementary and directed against the same systemic problem.

The forms of struggle may be different, but the meaning of struggle cannot be contradictory.

And the basis that unites these different ways should be the national one.

Not national, as a word used in speeches, but as a defense of the state’s identity, historical memory, sovereignty and right to exist.

Anti-Turkish, not in the sense of enmity towards peoples, but in the sense of rejecting the Turkish-Azerbaijani expansionist policy towards Armenia, the rewriting of history and the plan to break the will of our national resistance.

Anti-authoritarian, not in the sense of personal hatred or revenge, but in the sense of fighting against the system that internally presents external coercion as peace, retreat as realism, and national self-denial as state wisdom.

Today, the question is not even whether the struggle will be unified or decentralized.

History often does not even ask people if they are ready. It simply mercilessly puts them before the choice.

Our choice today is between the state and the system, national resistance and adaptation to defeat.
All other differences are temporary. This choice is fatal.

Davit Ananyan, former chairman of the RA SRC

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