Right after occupying the honorable 4th place in the majoritarian elections in #15 District of Talin, Raffi Hovhannisian came up with a legislative initiative. The announcement claims that the Republic of Armenia recognizes the independence of Karabagh. It’s not yet known whether occupying the 4th place in the elections stimulated Hovhannisian to come up with an initiative like that or maybe he’s trying to revenge on the government for not letting him be in the “prize triple”. But the fact is that another pro-national step is made. In that case let’ speak about NKR’s recognition. This issue has both a political and populist “categories”. Let’s speak about the political one first.
It’s quite obvious that the recognition of NKR on the part of Armenia would be a serious political mistake. This is so obvious that even the past government and oppositional parties were unanimous around this opinion. That’s the reason that neither the incumbent nor the previous governments have ever discussed this. We are not even mentioning how senseless the existence of the Minsk Group would be if we acknowledged NKR. Plus the possibility of the resumption of the war would be increased. That is not the greatest flaw of the mentioned legislative initiative. By recognizing NKR Armenia will have to also clarify what borders of Karabagh it recognizes. In other words if we recognize Karabagh we should also realize that states don’t have virtual or unclear borders. They have clear borders (we think the University of California will agree with this statement). As an opposite the NKR has proclaimed its independence on September 2, 1991 and mentioned concrete territories, which belong to it. Thus Armenia must either agree with these territories and even more than that. Agree with us this will not increase the reputation of Armenia in the world.
Does Raffi Hovhannisian understand all this? Indeed. He has graduated from the University of California; is the former Foreign Minister of Armenia and of course understand all the nuances better than many others. Thus why did he make such a legislative recommendation? In order to understand this we need to consider the second category of the issue – the populist category. The thing is that a part of the society is going to understand this initiative in the following way: “Good for Raffi. He’s a real patriot. Only he worries about Karabagh. If we had a president like him during Leng Temur’s age Dubai would have been ours now.” Now this is not a joke. It’s just this initiative cannot be construed any other way. What other purpose can this initiative have? First it won’t be adopted and secondly if adopted Armenia will suffer.
Moreover, Raffi Hovhannisian can afford such luxury. He knows that his recommendation is not going to be accepted anyway and can even come up with an initiative to start a war with Zimbabwe. There is no use in starting war with Zimbabwe. So what’s the point of recognizing NKR? The important thing is patriotism. Let the government worry about the consequences. Because it’s finally necessary to time to time refresh the political field because the Talin elections showed that the slogan “citizen do you take it?” doesn’t work any more. Now one should probably ask, “citizen do you recognize?” We mean Karabagh.