WHY OPPOSITION WON’T UNITE
Vardan Barseghyan

"Hayoc Ashkharh" daily newspaper, Armenia
Aug 15 2007

Classical Model Doesn’t Work

There is a widespread opinion that pro-governmental and pro-opposition
powers are conjoined by the common logic of the development of
political domain. Consequently the stronger the pro-governmental
powers the stronger opposition and vise verse. But this formulation of
political sciences doesn’t work in the present condition of Armenia. On
the contrary the more disorganized is the pro-governmental domain
the more disorganized is the opposition.

When we count the individuals and organizations working in the
opposition sector of the political domain we get a significantly big
number. Such as – "Orinats Yerkir" and "Heritage" parties representing
parliamentary opposition, ex-parliamentary opposition "National Union",
"Ardarutyun" and Armenian Pan National Party with its satellites and
branches, "Nor Jamanakner", Communist Party and others. In short we
have pro-opposition powers of any color, approaches and taste.

But if the picture is quite satisfactory in terms of number and
variety, the same can’t be said about its concept and gravity. For the
recent many years Armenian opposition has been facing one problem –
to unite and appear with a united candidate.

Moreover we can’t even expect a unification of a kind in the near
future. And this is the reason?

The first reason is that the pro-opposition activists are of different
"origins". That is to say their motives of being in pro-opposition
domain are different.

The second reason is their ideological and geopolitical differences
(if they really exist). Today’s pro-opposition domain consists of
radical liberals, nationalists, Bolshevik-revolutionists.

In addition to this some of them are confirmed pro-westerns and some
are sworn pro-Russians.

Besides that they have diametrically contradicting viewpoints about
the future of the country.

Another "anti-uniting" factor is their personal inaptness. These
people hate one another and separately they hate others. Meanwhile
they all consider themselves presidents.

But even in such conditions it is possible to unite. Of course if
there is an axis of unification – a goal, an idea, and finally a strong
power to achieve this goal. From the first sight it seems there is a
goal, which is "to carry out a coup d’etat through elections". But
the problems is, though the activists of the pro-opposition domain
are of the same opinion as regards the coup d’etat, they still can’t
reach an agreement about the united candidate.

And finally the most important condition that hinders the unification
of the pro-opposition powers is that they don’t trust one another. Each
of them states that he is real opposition activist and the others
are false and any time they are ready "to sell themselves". And this
statement of course is far not groundless.