Since the time when human beings moved from primitive age to a more civilized age negotiations have become an inseparable part of public relations. Negotiations were necessary for people in different levels of activity – business, politics, human relations, etc. Armenians didn’t stay behind from those processes either. However practice shows that if Armenians have success in negotiating in business, the same cannot be said about political negotiations.
Let’s start from the fact that during the last 50-60 years Armenians call the negotiation process “deals”. And if this “deal” has a positive outcome for the parties then they call it “peace”. In business this process is called “business meeting”, which ends up by signing contracts or by giving license to the second side overnight. However Armenian businessmen spend most of their time negotiating with tax bodies (but what’s the topic of discussion? It would be better to ask this question to supervising bodies). Political negotiations are divided into internal and foreign political negotiations. In Armenia all types of negotiations are “deals”, where the “powerful ones” always make sure there is “peace” and agreement. An exception is the Karabagh conflict, where the Minsk Group, US, Russia and Council of Europe cannot succeed in making the parties agree on peace. The greats don’t know that one of the parties is not Armenia (Armenia is more like an elder brother in this process but mostly elder brothers show up at the end and are invited by the defeated party) but rather Karabagh, which doesn’t participate in the negotiating process.
In the internal political field the negotiations, which have become active recently, look more like the “fair of Malatia” or a casino, where people have started to bet on “black” or “white”. They don’t understand that at the end always “zero” wins. And no matter how this or that political party denies such meetings they perfectly know who they are meeting with or what they are discussing. The whole idea is that the negotiations proceed not for the sake of an idea but for “private individuals”. Perhaps that’s the reason that in our country the winners are the “zero” and the people always lose. In some cases negotiations don’t take place at all (at least this is what Artashes Geghamyan is saying, who always wants to be alone without knowing the reason). And since Geghamyan loves to quote from classics or Armenian proverbs I’d like to remind him that Armenians have a very good proverb, “you can’t have a good supper alone”. For example, the “Legal State” negotiates with whoever and wherever possible. The ARF negotiate secretly (the secrecy is not a principle for them but a “habit”). The oppositionists mainly negotiate with the US Ambassador (however they don’t get anything out of that). Recently the oligarchs are negotiating with the journalists. And so on.
I don’t understand what could possibly be negotiated between Russian-oriented or American-oriented forces or “left” or “right”. Both the “left” and “right” say they want to develop the economy of this country (regardless of the fact that one is blaming the other one of corruption – first the liberals blame the communists, later vice versa). Both of them are right. There is one thing I am sure of. One day the negotiations will proceed among knowledgeable and professional people and the topic will be not their own benefits but the general benefit of our country and people. And as each negotiation requires “talent of art” the negotiator must be a “maestro”, but not a “merchant”.