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"To be or not to be": another Shakespeare-style post-election drama

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  • "To be or not to be": another Shakespeare-style post-election drama

    "To be or not to be": another Shakespeare-style post-election drama in Armenia
    by Martin Jermakyan

    http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2013-03-07--to-be-or-not-to-be--another-shakespeare-style-post-election-drama-in-armenia
    Published: Thursday March 07, 2013


    Serge Sargsyan and Raffi Hovannisian meet after the election. Photolure



    "Marcellus: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
    Horatio: Heaven will direct it."

    >From William Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

    A question that begs to be asked is if you do the same experiment
    under the same conditions five times, and for four times you get
    identical results, what is there to suggest that the fifth time it
    will produce a different result?

    This question is of high practical relevance to the Armenian reality -
    both within the confines of the Republic and Diaspora. However,
    Diaspora is not the subject of this article and the arrow of the quick
    thoughts released herein is pointed at the Republic even though when
    speaking of the experiments conducted by the Diaspora their number may
    be not in the range of five but fifty.

    Raffi Hovannisyan, with all due respect for his demeanor and conduct
    and for his introduction of a not greater-than-life ego on the
    Armenian political landscape, has given strong indications that he is
    not really interested in holding the position of the President of
    Armenia - at least as far as the president's governing functions are
    concerned. At best he is positioning himself as a Minister of Foreign
    Affairs even if hypothetically speaking Serge Sargisyan would
    surrender the post of presidency to him. Maybe Mr. Hovannisyan is
    simply soberly assessing the reality in terms of what it takes to
    govern over the Republic of Armenia. If yes then it is commendable.

    In essence his offer to President Sargisyan is equivalent to the
    latter's maintenance of shadow presidency continuing to govern over
    the country. And while claiming to pretend to be Armenia's President
    Mr. Hovannisyan proposes to help Mr. Sargisyan to stage a radical
    shift of country's foreign policy from Ter-Petrosyan-Libaridyan
    paradigms to a paradigm kin to that of Hovannisyan senior and ARF -
    with all due respect to the latter two.

    Meanwhile Mr. Hovannisyan's serenades addressed to Mr. Sargisyan sound
    like guarantees of security and immunity offered to Mr. Sargisyan and
    perhaps his extended family. But logically Mr. Sargisyan doesn't need
    to become a shadow president while he retains in his hands all the
    levers of governance over the Republic and beyond. If he agrees with
    Mr. Hovannisyan's foreign policy agenda and paradigms as it pertains
    in particular to Turkey and Karabagh, he will implement them himself
    and without the creation of an apparatus of a make-believe presidency.

    Mr. Hovannisyan's negotiations, post-electoral tactics and his
    self-positioning for the future developments in Armenia seem focused
    on proving that `he was right' and his foreign policy paradigms were
    unduly dismissed by Ter-Petrosyan culminated in his dismissal from the
    post of the foreign minister of Armenia in early nineties.

    All evidence suggests that President Sargisyan does not think that the
    Ter-Petrosyan-Libaridyan foreign policy paradigms have exhausted
    themselves and he will continue this line until there is strong
    evidence in favor of a U-turn. This is also perhaps why the
    Ter-Petrosyan team has not given its backing to Mr. Hovannisyan so
    far.

    The same resource base for governance

    Mr. Hovannisyan didn't have the resources to appoint his trusted
    representatives for monitoring purposes into almost half of the
    electoral stations of Armenia. I would appreciate an explanation as to
    how he is going to mass the resources needed in order to govern a
    zoo-like country such as Armenia - that is, of course, if he is not
    counting on Mr. Sargisyan to fulfill the mission of daily governance
    with the utilization of currently available to the latter resources.

    The sad reality of things which even Mr. Sargisyan cannot afford not
    to take into consideration is that there is a finite number of people
    in Armenia, maybe up to some twenty thousand, currently involved and,
    for better or worse, capable of performing daily governance functions.
    They constitute an inheritance from Soviet Armenia or have been
    wittingly or unwittingly incubated in Ter-Petrosyan era but have been
    truly unleashed in Kocharyan era of chieftainship and feudalization.
    They are apolitical, flexible and mobile and when needed they join the
    roles of the needed party.

    This is how All-Armenia National Movement got its critical mass in its
    good old days and this is why it got corrupted afterwards. This is
    also how the currently ruling Republican Party of Armenia got its
    human resources on mass scale - from All-Armenian National Movement in
    the second half of 1990s - overseen by late Vazgen Sargsyan. This
    shift was finalized when Serge Sargsyan combined the roles of
    president and the Republican Party leader.

    If by some divine miracle tomorrow Mr. Hovannisyan is going to indeed
    become the President of Armenia or `Zharangutiun' is going to become
    the ruling party, the bureaucratic apparatus is going to switch
    overnight to the latter and `Zharangutiun' is going to have no choice
    but to take them in due to its lack of any other alternatives for
    governance. One can confidently conjecture that if Mr. Hovannisyan was
    able to govern Armenia post-elections he would've been able to take
    the elections with all the outrageous violations that there were.

    However, it is noteworthy that time has come for a generational shift
    in Armenia's governing structure and personnel as a consequence of the
    aging of the current rulers, expiration of their constitutional
    eligibility mandate for further governance and exhaustion of the
    current modus operandi of governance. However the puzzle is where to
    take the corresponding resources from.

    Can Serge and Raffi cooperate on political transition?

    The important question on the Armenian political landscape today is
    not whether Mr. Hovannisyan can force Mr. Sargisyan to accept the
    results of elections the way Mr. Hovannisyan perhaps not without basis
    thinks he should. This question has a very concise answer - he cannot.
    While pretending to be a democratic country, and even though enjoying
    a rather high degree of freedom of speech and freedom of thinking,
    Armenia is a barricaded country and the culture of no war-no peace
    governs over her.

    The important question is how the coming five years are going to be
    utilized for the transition of Armenia to a civic society while
    maintaining a defensive capacity a strong and adequate to the existing
    and emerging threats? How is the generational shift going to be
    implemented and how new operational, administrative, economic and
    foreign policy paradigms are going to be shaped and managed in Armenia
    when the structure of existing military and geopolitical balance is
    changing, turning the region Armenia belongs to into the most volatile
    one? This is no small matter.

    When all talk around the respective coffee tables in Armenia and
    Diaspora has exhausted itself this is what is going to define the
    quality and pace of transition.

    If there is something Mr. Hovannisyan can accomplish is a consensus
    with Mr. Sargisyan on organized transition to a new political culture
    within the coming five years and thereafter. Mr. Hovannisyan can also
    have a strong influence over this process. With all the due criticism
    and available dissatisfaction with both Mr. Sargisyan and Mr.
    Hovannisyan, they are both patriots. They are also not egomaniacs,
    making achievement of constructive results possible.

    Mr. Hovannisyan and Mr. Sargsyan can help accelerate the formation of
    nonpartisan youth civic organizations in Armenia emerged as a bright
    light on the Armenian landscape as of late. They can render support to
    these organizations simply by not hampering or corrupting their
    evolution and without interference and attempts to turn them into
    political pawns in some chess games. Let these civic organizations, as
    infant as they are today, define their political posturing themselves
    when required. Too many artificial political parties and civic
    organizations have been coopted by the government and opposition. Mr.
    Sargisyan and Mr. Hovannisyan should help the non-partisan youth
    exercise due ownership rights over Armenia for Armenia to have future.
    And the timing is right.

    President Sargisyan has seen it all from day one of the new Armenian
    Renaissance in late 1980s and he has it all. All he has left to worry
    about is the legacy he will have to leave behind when gone. He should
    support the orderly transformation of Armenia from what is a
    para-militarized governing structure to a civic constitutional one.
    And this doesn't have to be at the expense of an even stronger
    Armenian army. This is not a zero-sum game. Civic society and a
    strong army can coexist. In fact the army will get only stronger when
    instead of the generals the solders and the ones who support them feel
    that they are the owners of the country.

    Mr. Hovannisyan can be very instrumental in helping the accomplishment
    of this mission and the history of Armenia will glorify him more for
    its success than for a failed presidency. Meanwhile he is in a tough
    spat too - damned if you engage in a constructive dialog, damned if
    you escalate confrontation and damned if you get out of the stage all
    together. In either case, form a personal point of view, Mr.
    Hovannisyan doesn't have a good alternative - he has to choose who he
    would rather make angry and what purpose he would rather serve. It
    remains to hope that being a patriot and a civilized man he will make
    the right choice.




    From: A. Papazian
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