– Before the mayoral elections all political powers believed that if Armenia failed to conduct fair elections Armenia’s reputation would suffer significantly. Despite the massive electoral violations after the elections the European monitors and authorities announced that this election was a step toward improvement. Do you think there has been improvement? What is that improvement like?
– No, I think nothing has changed. The “one step forward” expression was invented by certain people to explain certain things. Such step of improvement is not a standard to judge the elections. In other words, the announcements such as one step forward or one step back is more like irony than estimation. Plus, I don’t think any serious person would ever think that this election would be better than the previous ones. In order to change something you should do some work but the fact is that after the past elections the political powers spent their time to criticize and slash each other instead of working. In a word, they did not do anything serious. Even they failed to do the easiest and most important thing; they failed to make an agenda on working to have better elections. When the political powers were discussing the possibility of a dialogue between the government and opposition, they should have focused on this. Otherwise it would be impossible to launch a dialogue to change the situation. Dialogue does not mean to sit and talk only.
– But no one had developed a precondition of organizing elections again in order to start a dialogue.
– Yes, you are right, it means that the political powers did not want to improve the situation because the one who wants to change something should make an agenda, define what the problems and solutions are. While this is not done, it means that the logic of all powers running in elections is the same: get the power, and that’s all.
– It seems that it is becoming a tradition that the elected political powers are the ones that have power and are in the government because the political powers are mostly elected due to using administrative resources. If yes, what is the role of the opposition?
– If the opposition uses the same methods as the past time, there may be such results again. I mean all what happened the past time. Accordingly, the real political issue of the Armenian political field is other than the one that is introduced. The real problem is the following: there is not any real multi-party system in Armenia. Even more, there are no formed and stabile strong parties either. There is no optimism that we may have such parties in the future either.
– You said that before the elections the political powers had to make an agenda to follow during the elections. However it seems that the governmental powers in fact were doing their best to ignore the significance of the elections as much as they can, and it seems that it was their strategy. Do you think that such strategy brought to any positive results?
– Yes, but it was a temporary result. In fact the pro-government powers won majority of the city council election places. This is a result but I think that for a smart person this should not be a mere result because besides the results of different elections the situation in the country is important too. These elections were the mirror of reflection of such situation that I said. In such conditions I don’t think that anyone may be sure that they have defeated and can continue this way too long. Changes through such methods usually take place as a result of shocks, which is not good for any country.
– Do you personally believe that these elections were an improvement?
– Tell you frankly I had only one wish from this election; I wanted not to have any victims this time. From this point of view certainly it is good that there were no deadly clashes and victims. However in the reality there could not be any positive improvement without hard work. Of course there were some small changes in the manner of conduct of the elections. To be honest I had never heard a commission member saying that she was going to take her dress off and the monitors should leave from the precinct, but this time it happened (he means the sister of RL faction head Heghine Bisharyan – L.S.). If you can consider this change an improvement, then it is another issue. However I did not see anything serious and it could not happen either. Everything will be the same and even worse if they don’t work.
– The ANC has announced about dropping its mandates in the city council, thus the city council of Yerevan will consist of only pro-governmental powers: RPA and PA parties. Do you think that this city council will be capable to work without the counterbalance of the opposition?
– First, they have not dropped their mandates yet. Their announcement is not everything yet. They should also submit letters for all their members in the lists. It is an individual action and every person should write such letters individually. We will see whether it will happen or no. I don’t want to draw conclusions but would admit that from the legal point of view it is not a fact yet. On the other hand, I don’t think that dropping mandates can solve any problems. Do you remember that in the previous convocation of the parliament a number of MPs boycotted the sessions? It did not change anything. It is a pity that the imagination and understanding about the parliamentary majority and minority are very simple in Armenia. The majority in the parliament should present the problems and issues to be addressed, and the opposition should point out the shortcomings and malformations in the suggested solutions in order to really understand whether the majority is doing everything in a duly manner or no. I don’t think the resignation may solve this problem. If the problem is in canceling the results of the elections, there are different mechanisms for this purpose. I think that the opposition should accept and confess that during this time they have done a number of mistakes, as a result of which the elections were not good this time either. For example, one of their mistakes was that they told the Heritage party that they had just a small number of places in their list and that’s all. I don’t think that the only opposition party in the parliament deserves such approach. Also, now all powers are focused on the violations in the precincts of Malatia-Debastia community. But when the commissions of this community were being formed there were press publications that the representative of the Heritage was in hospital and the representatives of their party were not allowed to visit this person. They said that this person had appointed someone, who did not represent his party, to be in his place in the commission, but the other opposition powers did not say anything. It was clear that shortly it would have an impact on the votes in the mentioned community. I can bring a number of such examples. If the opposition wants to be success in the future too, then it should not focus on the mistakes of the government only but on its mistakes as well.
– The protocols of the opposition power show that the number of electoral violations was too high this time. However the European monitors say that the elections were consistent with the European standards. Is this the meaning of democracy? Is this what the Europeans were teaching us so far?
– These are not the monitors we know. The monitors who come to observe the national elections are from the PACE, but the monitors who come to observe the local government elections are form the local government European congress. This institution is under the EU’s umbrella too, but these are different and have different political experience. Second, usually in Armenia people read documents badly. The reports and statements of such institutions are in another language than the language used in the inner political agenda, thus the perceptions are different too. In their conclusion they write that the preparation works have been done well but not the election day, which I think has been observed during all elections of the past several years. As for the election day vote, they expressed their opinion concerning it. Plus, the so-called democracy is shown on the election day, and there are a number of ways how it is shown. Any country should do a lot of work in periods between elections in order to meet the democratic standards because democracy is not a cloudy thing. It is about the state administration system, the judicial and local government systems, Mass Media, etc. In a word, democracy is built on the composition of all these components. During elections it becomes clear how much work has been done and it is the reason why the estimations concerning elections are so critical. We should separate such estimates from the real situation of democracy in the country. Of course the opinions of European institutions are important as well, but the most important thing is our ability to address the issues of our country and see whether we can solve the outstanding problems or no. We should answer this question and after that do the other things. Different countries and institutions, including the European institutions, were interested in the development of the Armenian-Turkish relations and welcomed this initiative, but the people who know the reality say that there are serious dangers in this process. The situation development, especially after the meeting of the foreign ministers on April 23, clearly shows that these concerns are really justified. What now? Should we be satisfied with the positive estimations and opinions of the European institutions? Is that all we should do? I think that it is more important to be informed of the process itself and discuss the opinions and viewpoints in order to adopt decisions concerning the future policies.