Transparent future

01/08/2006 Tigran PASKEVICHYAN

Recently, many people are asking each other:

“Will there or will there not be a war?”

After getting the positive and/or negative responses, they start asking one another how that war will be, will Armenia survive or will it lose all it has achieved. It’s all natural until you go deep into the meaning of those words, until you don’t get goose bumps from hearing the words “war”, “survive” and “lose”.

The people who talk about war when talking about soccer, the weather or the dollar exchange rate don’t realize that, in contrast to soccer, the weather and the dollar exchange rate, war and peace depend on the people. In other words, starting or not starting a war depends on the Armenian authorities, whose only purpose is to establish a regime and get resources for the sake of peace. That’s what they call getting ready for a war..

What happened in Armenia eight years ago can be called a state overturn. The people who came to power as a result of the war decided not to put an end to it. They didn’t realize that a war not declared over is an ongoing one demanding endless resources. The search for an endless continuity and endless resources had to get rid of democracy in a country which had reached success at a time when the world recognized it as a heavenly, democratic land.

Armenia can’t convince the international community that it respects the opinion of its citizens when it has had two non-democratic presidential and parliamentary elections, as well as one referendum during the past eight years. If it can’t, then it can no longer use the phrases “the people won’t know” or “the people aren’t ready”. There will come a day when the people who didn’t care about the electoral fraud during those elections will ask the current president of Armenia the following question: How is it possible to get elected without really getting elected and only respect the opinion of the people of Karabakh?

They are also going to ask how it was possible to “get rid of” a rather influential party forming part of the coalition or create a new influential, 200,000 member party in two months and act as if the people won’t forgive any compromise for the Karabakh conflict settlement? After all, the members of that 200,000 member party won’t say a word against the current president and the political system. If the international community multiplies the 200,000 with the members of each family of Armenia, it will get approximately 800,000-1,000,000 people. If it adds the followers of the party and the members of the families, then we’ll almost have the amount of Armenian citizens allowed to vote. If these people support the president and the defense minister, how can they speak against them?

If the international community adds the lack of citizens’ and oppositionists’ freedom of speech to express their opinions on the 20 TV companies of Armenia, then it’s clear that the children singing and reciting on the Armenian TV channel ALM (Alternative Mass Media) don’t stand in the way of the Karabakh conflict settlement. If we add the opposition and the members of each party that consider themselves president and never talk about peace, everything becomes clear.

Today, Azerbaijan declares its economic achievements, keeps mentioning its daily increasing military budget, while Armenia keeps declaring that it’s ready to fight, that it’s organized and the same false phrases about uniting as one. Armenians don’t think for a moment that the only weapon to fight against the war is creating a democratic system and not increasing the military budget.

Armenians don’t understand that if the current authorities come to power again, we will not lose the seized territories, but rather Karabakh as a whole, whether that be by a contract or war. The people who have not done anything against the fraud of the past decade are also going to stay silent this time. They will once again say that the elections were liberal and fair, but not transparent; or transparent, but unfair and will announce at the European Council that there is still a chance for improvement.

As for the Armenian authorities, they will keep reaching for the best and find it inevitable to sign a document. God forbid for that to be a supreme capitulation document.