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  • Elections or Reforms?

    ELECTIONS OR REFORMS?
    ARMEN TSATOURYAN

    Hayots Ashkhar Daily
    Published on April 26, 2008
    Armenia

    Two incompatible solutions


    To find a peaceful way out of the country's current situation, two
    different options are proposed.

    If we immediately and unconditionally rule out the radical opposition's
    persistent claims for political instabilities and revolutions, which
    might have an undermining impact on Armenia, it will become clear that
    the entire mosaic of the possible solutions can be grouped and divided
    into two parts.

    First: Organizing parliamentary elections, thus enabling the radical
    opposition to be fully involved in political processes, after the
    streets protests following the 2008 presidential elections.

    Second: Raising the quality and speeding up the paces of the reforms
    planned previously. This will help gradually overcome the internal
    polarization and mutual estrangement still existing in society.

    The situation resulting from the 2008 presidential elections certainly
    has its objective and subjective reasons, and overcoming the former
    through organizing elections is impossible as it is related to a whole
    entangled string of problems existing in the country's political and
    economic life. And the only way towards their solution is the
    implementation of consistent reforms. The issue whether or not to
    organize elections is, undoubtedly, of secondary importance in this
    context.

    In theory, the new parliamentary elections open certain prospects for
    shifting the opposition from street to square and healing the political
    arena. However, the whole problem is that Ter-Petrosyan's political
    team refused to participate in the parliamentary elections, and the
    votes obtained by the other political factions found their reflection
    in the Parliament, elected legitimately in May 2007.

    So, is it worth organizing a `charity function' for the opposition and
    its leader, who received 20 percent of votes in the presidential
    elections, just in order to shift them to the National Assembly?

    The answer to this question lies behind the sharp internal political
    confrontation following the presidential elections. Obviously,
    Ter-Petrosyan's team used the presidential elections just as a means or
    tool for staging a scenario of a destabilized political situation.
    Otherwise, if Ter-Petrosyan had really intended to hold victory in the
    presidential elections, he would have participated in the process of
    distributing parliamentary mandates in 2007, gained a seat in the
    electoral commissions and only thereafter thought about higher
    ambitions.

    Therefore, instead of doing an accurate calculation of the existing
    ratio of forces, the new parliamentary elections will mark the
    beginning of a new scenario leading to the destabilization of the
    country's internal political situation.

    The entangled string of the problems existing in the political and
    economic life of the republic is impossible to overcome within a period
    of 6 months or even 1 year. Whereas the new destabilization of the
    internal political situation may delay the solution of the existing
    problems for several decades. Therefore, the `charity' proposed by
    Ter-Petrosyan and his political team may become an evil deed for the
    whole country.

    The accomplished and tested `electoral prescription' useful to
    `democratic systems' may lead to a more exacerbated form of the disease
    of distrust in the electoral institutions and, instead of moving the
    country forward, hamper its development. By the way, the same may
    happen during the next regular parliamentary elections if the upcoming
    reforms are slowed down or do not reach their goal.

    The existing discrepancies between the issue of organizing new, fair
    and transparent elections (which, in theory, is the right solution) and
    the current situation may be overcome by way of implementing consistent
    reforms in the course of the upcoming 3 years, till the next regular
    parliamentary elections, and such reforms should create a new economic
    and political situation in the country. In such conditions, the major
    part of the objective reasons of the post-electoral political
    confrontation will be overcome. Society will be able to give a new
    meaning to what happened, and the political forces will manage to find
    solutions to and prescriptions for the new situation.

    rganizing regular or extraordinary elections is not the issue here; the
    whole problem is how each one will use the 3-year interval between them.
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