The brutality applied against a military doctor of Armenian army Vahe Avetyan in Harsnakar restaurant, the death of the young doctor, the statement of Ruben Hayrapetyan on putting down the MP’s mandate, the reaction of the society that followed this process come to prove the dangerous level of unhealthiness of the political-social life of Armenia.
Moreover, if in the case of the society people get more united after tragic events the then the government gets even more degraded. The government has been showing its face for so many times now – first with its sinful silence to crimes and with its attempts to disguise crime and then by trying to take a maximum advantage from the crime and gaining credits as a result. They were surprisingly blaming certain groups of the society making bargains and gaining points at the expense of the incident of Harsnakar and Vahe Avetyan’s death. Perhaps there was certain portion of truth in those accusations, which doesn’t demean the struggle and efforts of the civil society to denounce the crime and demanding punishment for the culprits. However, when the government is blaming others for bargaining the tragedy it should at least have sufficient morality not to do the same thing. However, the statement of Ruben Hayrapetyan about putting down his mandate, the information outflow that followed it, the “words of admiration” expressed by mass media and social networks were used in a cheap way for the government to take advantage of the death of the young officer. Ruben Haryrapetyan’s statement in fact clearly showed that before refusing the mandate he had met with the RA president Serzh Sargsyan. So even if he was going to put down his mandate on his own he was forced to demonstrate that this was done after the meeting with Serzh Sargsyan just to create the impression that the president backed this decision. And in order to make this impression even mightier the political technologists of the president very rapidly started to circulate footage on pro-government websites as though a reporter had accidently met Hayrapetyan while he was leaving the President’s office. In that footage Hayrapetyan clearly looks depressed. It seemed that after the “Mashtots Park” operation the government administration has left no room to look even cheaper but the president’s technologists couldn’t help the temptation of showing the president in light of the “honest judge.” The opinions that Serzh Sargsyan has sacrificed Ruben Hayrapetyan to the greatest extent fit the reality. But this is only the perfunctory expression of the phenomenon because by only sacrificing a tiny element of the oligarchic pyramid and by demonstrating the way it did, the government is even more strengthened. On the one hand, it becomes more “democratic” and “kinder,” on the other hand it remains pretty much the same and maintains its power as government. And the government succeeds in benefiting from the wave of discontent of the society. And we don’t mean the recent opinions that the wave of discontent is instigated from the government, which is also quite possible. And we don’t mean the fact that various non-governmental organizations are operating in the wing of the government and my making noise at various occasions wreaks their own vengeance over select officials. We mean the fact that by instigating the situation takes on the initiative at a certain point and steers it in a direction that is most favorable for the government. The exact same thing happened in Mashtots Park when the government has been contributing to the dissemination of information for weeks and as a result the movement was expanding even m0re and everything reached to the point when Serzh Sargsyan unexpectedly came over to the park and said the winged words to the mayor – “It doesn’t look good.” The same thing has happened during Domingo “operation,” as a result of which the government with its resources conduced to the campaign against the mayor of Yerevan Gagik Beglaryan. Once again everything has turned into such a passionate process that Serzh Sarsgyan had to mediate and Beglaryan had to resign. Moreover, as in all the previous cases, this has been done with grief violations of the law. But the government succeeded in leading the process in the direction to form the image of struggle against evil. And the society accepted the “punishment of the evil” with encouragement and closed their eyes to the enforcement of laws. The same can be said about the incident with Ruben Hayrapetyan. The governmental propaganda clearly shows that the resignation of Hayrapetyan was forced by the president. Only after the meeting with the president Hayrapetyan agreed to resign. In the meantime they circulate the viewpoint that this step was the expression of moral responsibility. If we are talking about morality which is strictly an individual category what can the president have to do with it? These precedents together with other negative effects contain another very dangerous threat. In practice, any representative of government can perpetrate any kind of crime, which by the mediation of the president may turn into a story of a “kind deed.” It means that the government has established an efficient mechanism of staying above the law and in the meantime playing the role of the democrat. Moreover, since in Armenia everything is based on propaganda, the fact that this kind of trait is more characteristic to Sultan states and authoritarian regimes, becomes secondary. The society still doesn’t have immunity to such propaganda, which also lies on the policy of governmental propaganda. The incident is also an occasion to discuss the demeanor of the civil society, the connection between the civil society and political parties, the mutually applied inertness. Without arguing about the vital role and activities of civil society organizations, including their efforts to unify the society regarding Harsnakar incident, we should nonetheless agree that in this field there are certain issues, which are results of common social, political matters. The civil initiatives and various Facebook groups, have definitely adopted traits characteristic to political parties. In this sense, these groups have also adopted a manner of political party functioning. The people may agree with the common line of a civic initiative but they should also have the own opinions and disagreements in regard of various phenomena. Whenever such contradictive opinions pop up these civic initiatives label them as traitors and government servants. The tragedy of Harsnakar and the processes that followed it, Ruben Hayrapetyan’s statement of putting down his mandate, are multi-layer phenomena. But any opinion that different from the ones of the leaders of these groups are resisted with pressure and counterarguments. In order to get convinced of this it would be enough to follow discussions on Facebook and the campaigns organized by these groups on the streets of Yerevan. Currently certain transformation processes are taking place in Armenia, in which the role of civil society escalates. And in order for this positive and extremely commendable process to develop it is important to keep the civic groups away from the flaws of political parties. Lastly, the role of the civil society has increased also because of degradation of political organizations. Harsnakar may also serve as a catalyzing effect. Yes, the government had to take on certain steps but if the civil society decides to slow down and claim that they had already reached victory the government may benefit even more from that and create more “victories” out of that.
Garik GRIGORYAN