Is there going to be a struggle of individuals or ideas during the upcoming parliamentary elections? This was the question during the subsequent debate at the “Pressing” club. According to vice-editor of “168 Hours” newspaper Armen Baghdasaryan, there is a theoretical opinion that people vote for people in the majority electoral system and ideas in the proportional electoral system.
“But it seems as though that that is going beyond the limits in Armenia; in other words, they choose more and more people in both the proportional and majority electoral systems. That is the reason why the names of the first three candidates in the proportional electoral system are written on the ballots,” said A. Baghdasaryan.
Middle Eastern studies specialist David Hovhannisyan believes that in the sense of ideas, in Armenia “the nationalist discourse is clear; the only thing missing are the shades which are more delicate than the thick”.
According to Hovhannisyan, our course towards foreign issues is also formed “based on the nationalist discourse”.
Non-partisan National Assembly Deputy Khachatur Sukiasyan said that the ones transferring the ideas on paper are the individuals.
According to him, no matter what, anything depends on individuals. “When the ideas become a system, individuals change. The idea starts to function within the system and each person becomes the holder of that idea,” noted the deputy. “However, our ideas are still not clear,” noticed A. Baghdasaryan. Kh. Sukiasyan agreed with that and said that “Armenians still don’t have the custom, enough experience and they need time and desire for that.”
“Any communicative scheme (and elections, especially the pre-electoral campaign, are a communicative scheme) presuppose that the following four components exist. First is the retranslation, which has to say something or communicate. The second is the “message”, material, idea that must be expressed. The third is the environment in which the given person sends the given message and the fourth is the person who receives the “message”, in this case the electorate. Even in this scheme it is clear to see that all loops are necessary; thus, they can’t be altered. They complete each other,” said National Assembly Deputy and member of the Republican Party Armen Ashotyan. By trying to comment on the concept of the idea, Ashotyan stated that the political field of Armenia is not subject to the classical political scientific approach. “If we say plan or world view not in the political scientific sense, but rather in the sense of domestics, there is not one deputy candidate and/or political party that doesn’t have the “idea” attached. The idea for even the deputy nominated in the majority electoral system is the following: ‘I have to get elected because I want to live the good life’, or he has other motives and in this case, it is very important who says it, what he says, in what environment and whom he says it to. In the sense of political science, unfortunately, these elections did not instill hope that we will have a political system more or less close to that of Western Europe. I think that the tendencies seen in the political field will allow us to have a clearer political system in 2012,” said A. Ashotyan.
According to member of the “Prosperous Armenia” party and senior lecturer of the International Relations Department of the Yerevan State University Aram Safaryan, there are ideas in Armenia, but “our people are no longer conceptualized as they were in 1988-1990”. “We [“Prosperous Armenia”] have proposed ideas for the past eight months; ideas that, to be honest, favored most people,” mentioned A. Safaryan. In response to this, there was a comment made according to which the public has not opposed because there are no other ideas given by the “Prosperous Armenia” party. According to one of the debaters, the Republicans and “Prosperous Armenia” don’t differ with their ideas, meanwhile, for example, the ideas of the ARF and the Armenian National Movement, do. “We have proposed an alternative. But it is not called an “idea”,” said the “Prosperous Armenia” representative. “Perhaps that is a correct technique,” noted Kh. Sukiasyan.
Armen Ashotyan did not agree with the viewpoint that there is no difference in ideas of the Republican and “Prosperous Armenia” parties. “The Armenian Republican Party is clearly resolute as a national conservative party which although declarative, but is stated in our charter. How does “Prosperous Armenia” format its political credo?” asked the Republican deputy to A. Safaryan.
“We are a centralized, liberal democratic party. Our ideology is based on national concord, social equality and supremacy of human rights,” responded the “Prosperous Armenia” representative.
Armen Baghdasaryan asked Ashotyan a question. “In your opinion, are citizens going to cast their votes for the Republican Party because it is a national conservative party or because the party list includes the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister and others?” Ashotyan responded that their party will receive votes with the first two arguments. “In reality, government resources are divided into four political parties. We look at their lists. The Republican Party has always been associated with the government and has never hid the fact that it is part of the government. The ARF list includes people who have administrative levers, including regional heads, ministers, department heads, etc. The United Labor Party includes deputy ministers. “Prosperous Armenia” has representatives of different governmental levers. So, it is incorrect and absurd to say that the governmental resources are centralized. But there is a large part of the electorate that is nationalist and believe me when I say that they are many,” said Ashotyan.
A. Safaryan presented the debate participants the political comment on the “novelty of the “Prosperous Armenia”. “The times have passed when people used to come out to the revolution with flags and propose their ideas. Now, as we feel the demand, we have proposed to the public, have named that proposal “Prosperous Armenia”, a policy that satisfies the wish of living the good life and many people have favored it. Our hope and our base is that idea. The rest, of course, is campaign, technologies, inventions. But our real base is that 2006-2008 are changing things. Those years are actually opening a new page for Armenian society. That page had to be opened and that proposal had to be made to the people. This is our novelty in political science,” said A. Safaryan.
According to editor-in-chief of “Yerevan” journal Ida Martirosyan, the world and in particular Armenia, is in a stage when in essence, there can’t be any new proposals. “In essence, they are all the same. In my opinion, the only new proposal which, God forbid, can be made is giving up Karabagh. The same ideas rotate, but there is a time when a new party comes into the field. It doesn’t matter if it is called “Prosperous Armenia”, “Country of Law” or “Dignified Future”; it is understandable that that is one liberal-democratic ideology and it simply has different names and it’s clear as to what it is after,” stated I. Martirosyan.
“I don’t agree with you because world changes always start with information revolutions. An information revolution took place in 1980 after which stroke what is called “post-modernism”, which signaled the end of ideologies. Why? It is because something new has to be born. It is understandable that Armenian society is off-track, but the part of the state that must borne new ideas must understand that the world has moved forward. Excuse me, but if we are still living in a slave society, then they are already feudalizing the country. We must try to get ahead of society. New ideas are borne today, but we are still roaming,” said D. Hovhannisyan.
“We all accept the fact that ideas play a role and are significant, but unfortunately, we all understand that they don’t play huge roles. It is very important what is being said, but it is even more important who is saying it. In other words, the individual plays an even greater role now because you can simply order beautiful ideas; it is just a matter of technology,” says chairman of the “Christian-Popular Rebirth” party Sos Gimishyan. According to Gimishyan, those “beautiful ideas” can be nicely elaborated and given a “nice formulation”, but that still doesn’t imply victory. Gimishyan is of the opinion that there is a problem with individual trust because society has always been cheated. “Unfortunately, the meaning of individuals is broad in Armenian reality. I am certain that there are two main ideas in Armenia-will the authorities regenerate or not? Of course, the state may found a party if it doesn’t provide equal conditions, just like it did by founding “Country of Law” and can shut down that party at any given time. That’s just the way it is,” said Gimishyan. According to him, it is very important to have the ideas and current social issues go hand-in-hand and to have society understand that certain problems will be solved as a result of certain policy. “In that case, the elements of civil society will start to co-operate with the political force that has the ideology and trustees,” stated the leader of the “Christian-Popular Rebirth” party. Referring to his opinion on the “ideas” in the political field of Armenia, Gimishyan stated that the foundation of the “Prosperous Armenia” party months before the elections was done intentionally for the regeneration of the authorities. “I don’t see any ideas in “Prosperous Armenia”, although I have read the party plan very carefully. I can say that many of the formulations (such as “local administration”) don’t exist in the world. We have local management, local self-management, but not local administration. “Prosperous Armenia” says that let’s conduct fair elections. It makes no sense when you have a party with governmental levers saying that. You are the ones conducting it, you implement it and you commit the fraud. In all times, the executive branch of government has been the one committing the electoral fraud,” mentioned Gimishyan. According to Armen Ashotyan, the “Prosperous Armenia” party is not an Armenian phenomenon. “Why are you surprised? Similar things are done around the world. For example, the “Union for Democracy Movement” party was founded in 2002 in France and the leader of the latter Nikolay Sarcosi became the principal presidential candidate three-four years later,” said the Republican MP.
Safaryan referred to the viewpoints of the debate participants according to which the uprising of “Prosperous Armenia” is conditioned by the persona of Gagik Tsarukyan. “Yes, our party is led by one of the richest people in Armenia and this is one of the phenomena of our success. It is not a shame to have money. The successful person says: ‘This is my example and I, besides myself, am ready to think about you too,” mentioned the “Prosperous Armenia” representative.
According to head of the “P-Art” company Karen Kocharyan, ideas entirely don’t work in Armenia. “It is simply fantastic to struggle for ideas in the modern political field of Armenia. We had the idea only back in 1988-1990 and then we had the individuals come forward,” stated Kocharyan.
On the contrary, businessman and attorney Sargis Aghabekyan believes that “in the sense of ideas, Armenia has no problems”. “We are simply dealing with regulatory and non-regulatory ideas. In order to have the former function in Armenian political life, we need to have the mechanisms force those ideas to work in the political field. We are still in the evolutionary phase of those ideas. If a couple of us have a general interest and nothing stands in our way, we forget about the law and do things based on interests. When any mechanism counterbalances us, we will try to make references to the law,” said Aghabekyan.
Kh. Sukiasyan said that in civil society, society lays down its demands by means of elections, but that is “still not thinking” in Armenia. “I personally think that it is very risky to make promises to the people. The ones to do that are the political activists with enough expertise and who have never slid off-track. When Tony Blair was presenting his political party to the public, the world didn’t know who Tony Blair was. But the country entrusted the party and that individual. Who would imagine that Blair would remain prime minister this long? The reason for that is that the political party has always pressured him from the inside. When are Armenians going to reach that level?” said Kh. Sukiasyan.
According to A. Ashotyan, individuals are important in Armenian reality because “in reality, our political field has started to become homogenous when it comes to ideology”. The deputy mentioned that nearly 95% of Armenian political parties accept the economic liberalism and almost all accept democracy as a mechanism. Ashotyan also referred to the example of Blair. “The Armenian Republican Party has changed three leaders due to bad circumstances. But the party has been able to regenerate a leader whom society has trusted later. What I mean is that we have the example of Blair in our party,” said Ashotyan. Gimishyan noticed that that was possible because the Republican Party has always been part of the government. “My evaluation of the political party will be final when that party becomes the opposition for 4-5 years. In that case I will say that it is truly a political party and is not dependent on individuals,” said leader of the “Christian-Popular Rebirth” party.
Khachatur Sukiasyan also stated that the lack of “culture” can be seen when individuals who change political parties from time to time are not publicly reprimanded.
“Everyone moves to pro-government parties; meanwhile it should be based on the ideology. I think that the functions of the state mechanism also help in this process,” said the deputy.