The OSCE Minsk group co-presidents visited the region. There are no elections and/or referendum in neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan and as stated during many international conferences, 2006 may be a good year for the Karabagh peace settlement.
Meanwhile, the opposition is trying to understand what kind of evaluations international structures gave regarding the fraud which was going on during the referendum and it seems as if the answer to this question is out in the open. The world was aimed towards weakening the power of Kocharyan and Alieyev through the referendum in order to demand a better solution to the Karabagh conflict.
This scheme is pretty transparent at first, but there are many issues behind.
1. Basically, the opposition realizes (and realized even before the referendum) that the world does not care about strengthening democracy in our region, but rather it cares about the Karabagh peace settlement; that is why international structures did not do anything against the fraud during the referendum due to their outlooks for the peace settlement. Fine…but if the opposition knew this, why didn’t it reflect upon the Karabagh peace settlement and its point of views during the public meetings and speeches? After all, that would have been more logical. You know that the number one problem facing the country is the Karabagh peace settlement; you understand that the international organizations also consider that a priority and you present your point of views. Our opposition did things their own way and naturally, neither the people nor the international organizations paid any attention to the opposition.
2. According to this scheme, Kocharyan and Aliyev, who evidently are not legitimate, are going to be obligated to find a solution for the Karabagh conflict (obviously a solution which will not help anyone, otherwise we can’t demand anything). But the opposition does not say whether Kocharyan will accept that obligation or not. Nothing is said about this out loud, but it is possible that the opposition pictures the upcoming events in the following way: foreign countries demand some unbeneficial solution (the first stage requires the return of liberated territories), Kocharyan signs the paper by ceding to international pressure and…
There is no need to go further. Either the people go out to the streets and change power, or the police, generals and “national-patriotic unions” start a state revolution and the people know about that via the evening news broadcasts.
Let’s start from the second variant. The armed (or the one being guided by threats to apply force) revolution is always the non-preferable one. Much less in Armenia because we have learned from experience that change of power based on the Karabagh conflict settlement creates a bad situation for Karabagh first and foremost.
As for the variant of “people going out to the streets” (the opposition probably hopes for this), one thing that is unclear is why the people have to hope for the opposition to solve the Karabagh conflict if that opposition has not even stated its opinion regarding the Karabagh peace settlement to this day. The expressions claiming that “the Karabagh conflict will be settled only after democracy in Armenia and Azerbaijan is strengthened” can not really be considered “point of views” (although the statement does sound nice). Who said that the people of Karabagh will agree with living in democratic Azerbaijan? Who said that the 100% European oriented Azeri will agree with considering Karabagh as a separate state?
In conclusion, the only Armenian political figures that can play a key role are the ones that have a certain orientation regarding the Karabagh peace settlement and who dare publishing that. Otherwise, the “political processes” are just talking and have nothing to do with real politics.