Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who returned to power in 2006 as a result of free elections, announced on July 19 that “there will never be another election” in the country. His reasoning was more eloquent. the opposition, it turns out, wants to come to power through elections.

Thus, Ortega unwittingly gave the most honest definition of an authoritarian government, according to which the constitutional right of the people to change the government peacefully is already an attempt to seize power for such a government.

Dictatorship does not begin the day the government announces that there will be no more elections. On that day, the formality just ends. Dictatorship begins much earlier, when elections are still held, but the government already controls the conditions of competition, the administrative resources, the information field, the law enforcement system, and the legal tools to arbitrarily validate the final result.

Nikol Pashinyan also came to power through a public uprising and elections, promising to return the state and power to the people. After eight years, the state and the government were not returned to the people, but were gradually used for the reproduction of the power of one person and one political force. And any real possibility to change that government was presented and is presented as a threat to the state, peace and even the existence of Armenia.

When a citizen can vote, but his vote cannot change the government, the election ceases to be a mechanism of democracy and becomes a ritual of legitimizing the authoritarian government.

Then comes the next stage, the consistent weakening of political alternatives. Criminal prosecution against one, search of another, public accusation of a state body against a third, economic or administrative pressure against a fourth. Law enforcers and courts are no longer independent bodies of justice, but are the last link that gives a legal appearance to a political decision.

Ortega has already removed the mask, but Pashinyan’s system still needs it in order to show democracy to the outside world and present the reproduction of power internally as a choice of the people.

Therefore, the difference between Nicaragua and Armenia for now is not in the nature of the government, but in the distance covered by the authoritarian path.

Nicaragua is not a distant Latin American story. It is a mirror at the end of our chosen path.
Ortega has already said what Pashinyan’s system is still trying to hide behind the election sign. the people can vote, but the government no longer accepts the people’s right to change itself.

Davit Ananyan, former chairman of the RA SRC

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