Several days ago the PACE president, Karel De Gucht said in Yerevan that he believed the upcoming parliamentary elections would be democratic and would comply with the highest standards. However, Mr. Karel De Gucht did not say why he thought so. There isn’t anyone in Armenia that thinks so. Even the governmental politicians are not so sure about it; they just say that “they hope the elections will comply with the highest standards”.
Please don’t think that everything is perfect since the PACE president could see the situation before the elections himself. Even if he were not informed he could see the pre-election posters of governmental parties attached to walls in the streets himself (it is a violation of the law on pre-election campaign). Otherwise, they may just “say beforehand that they believe in it” so that they can express their disappointment after the elections. This is how teachers do with pupils that always get the lowest marks and don’t do their lessons well. Usually teachers ask them to answer by saying good words to encourage them, but later they imitate that they are disappointed about them again. The problem is the fact that the authorities are trying to harm the reputation of election monitors beforehand to decrease the role of the possible negative estimations of the international election monitoring missions. That is why they do the following way: “they try to make people believe that the international institutions are going to monitor everything so that they can find at least small shortcomings to press on Armenia and make us sign the Karabakh agreement, accordingly monitors are our enemies since they want to take Karabakh from us and those who may support them are traitors as well”. In a word, it turns out that the whole world is trying to take Karabakh from us either by giving money (Millennium Challenges), by cheating (international peacekeeping forces and prolonged referendum) or by frightening (international sanctions) and we are standing on our strong feet and don’t give Karabakh to them. Here a question originates: “What kind of “wise” policy are our authorities implementing that the whole world is trying to take Karabakh from us?”
Anyway, let’s not discuss this issue since, fortunately, the whole world is not undermining us and their purpose is not taking Karabakh from us, but developing peace and at least stability in the region, which is possible only in case of signing a peace agreement. Notwithstanding, we think that there is a small detail that is more important than the other things. The problem is the fact that the international community connects the upcoming elections with the issue of Karabakh and considers that issue in the framework of the Karabakh conflict negotiations, indeed in Armenia the elections are connected with everything else but not the Karabakh conflict issue. In other words, the problem lies in Armenia. In Armenia the society has not decided yet whether the conflict final settlement is in our interests or not (settling generally, but not settlement projects).
Let’s imagine that we are really interested in the final settlement. In this case we should be ready for the pressure that the international community may impose on Armenia and Azerbaijan to settle the conflict soon. At the same time we should do our best to be more democratic than Azerbaijan so that they make more pressure on them. In a word, we should organize democratic elections.
Now let’s imagine that we are not interested in the final settlement of the conflict. In this case we should do our best not to create any reasons for the international community to press on us. Accordingly, again we should organize democratic elections. In a word, the authorities should not think about whom to support to be elected in precincts and how to distribute the ministers’ portfolios, but about what is more beneficial for the Karabakh conflict settlement. They should think about this, of course if they still remember that the mentioned issue still exists.