Do you want to accompany, or lead, or go your own way…You must know what you want and that you want it.”
Friedrich Niche
The Armenian opposition hasn’t been out in the open ever since the end of the constitutional amendments referendum. Oppositionist figures are afraid to show themselves to the public eye after not fulfilling their promises to start the revolution, gather a bunch of people and talk about bringing back the constitutional norms of Armenia. It would be wrong to say that Armenians don’t trust the opposition. They do trust, it’s just that people don’t trust themselves and that’s why the leading political figures choose to “quickly” join other parties rather than taking measures.
Everyone in Armenia knows that in Armenia, the hegemony belongs to a group of oligarchs and that being oppositionist doesn’t mean to be naïve, but rather stupid. Everyone knows that you must have a voice to voice your opinion and, as we all know, you have to have an opinion to voice.
In times like these, what does the group of people considered to be the opposition supposed to do? It’s meaningless to talk about starting a revolution, simply due to the fact that nothing has really changed after the last two Georgian and Ukrainian revolutions. Experience showed that by you can’t bring back constitutional norms, or simply democracy, by giving warnings to police officers, teaching some rich people a lesson and appearing “helpless” to the West.
If there is no ideology or, better yet, ideologies contradicting each other, then the revolution turns into a massive cultural event, which was exactly what happened on April 12-13, 2004 on Baghramyan street in Yerevan. Instead of instilling their ideologies in the minds of the people and getting feedback, the oppositionist figures had simply organized a song/dance group.
Now my fellow television network colleagues will criticize me for using the word “group”. I turn the word “group” into “ensemble” while reading their texts because after all, there has to be a root for the word no matter how hard you try to stay true to the language standards.
So, getting back to what I was saying, the non-ideological opposition will not be able to organize massive cultural events anymore because Alternative Mass Media television network, the “Prosperous Armenia” party and even the municipality and the defense ministry are doing a great job at that.
What must the opposition do so that the upcoming elections don’t take place in a desert, so that the political field won’t only concern the poorly staged Armenian Republican-“Prosperous Armenia” party conflict? The opposition doesn’t have anything else to do, but it can change the course of events by doing something.
It’s kind of hard to get back on their feet after the scorching heat of the summer. There will be a competition and each side is going to yield to the other; thus, we won’t find out whose self-defense was more influential.
The next option is to leave the political field. Oppositionists often announce their decisions to leave the political field. But there are two problems here: the first has to do with leadership-who should be the first to announce and what guarantee is there that the next will follow: Secondly, the opposition has to come up with serious ways of convincing the public before the meeting. It’s hard to find one person among the opposition who can write a based and good text.
There is a third option for bringing back the opposition’s lost time and image. To tell you the truth, this is the only and non-substitutable option remaining from October 1999, but the political figures must be brave and have the political will to take that step. That way oppositionists can really prove that they are not interested in coming to power, but rather they care about the people’s interests. They can prove that establishing democracy in Armenia is not the ticket to Europe or America, but rather something that isolated Armenia needs.
The opposition can do all this by bringing the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan to the political arena and having him lead their election campaigns. The situation must change and it must change completely, not only in Armenia, but also throughout the region. Armenia has only reached success by being democratic and must keep those achievements by being democratic.