THE AGO GROUP TEACHES LESSONS

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
April 03, 2008

We have known for a long time

It’s quite funny to follow the delegation of the Ago Monitoring
Group of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers which, under
the leadership of Per Syorgen, teaches lessons of democracy to our
officials and politicians during its visit to Yerevan.

In the flood of the demagogic statements on Armenia’s deviating from
democratic principles, no time and space is left for a person to
decide what that ill-fated democracy could really mean and what it
has in common with the real authorities governing the people.

The real existence of "democracy" has only two viable forms:
"qualification-based democracy", i.e. true democracy for the select,
or, "governable democracy", i.e. imitation of democracy for all.

Contemporary liberal democracy is entirely governable. And it couldn’t
have been otherwise. Ungovernable democracy is ochlocracy, terror and
chaos which are quickly transformed into totalitarianism. The thing
is that [direct and equal] democracy implies a formal equality among
absolutely unequal individuals. They are unequal both in terms of
their professionalism and mental abilities and from the point of view
of property and responsibility. The voice of a degenerate drunkard
is equalized to the voice of an intellectual scholar and so on and
so forth.

Such formal equality, if feasible, would be the same as the equality
between the owner of one share and the owner of the whole control
package of a joint stock company; or, the equality between a professor
and a half-educated student in an academic council. Such system could
not possibly function.

That’s why the mechanism of true democracy always functions as a
mechanism compensating formal equality.

Historically, democracy, that is, the form of government elected
by citizens possessing certain rights, has originated as a
qualification-based equality, i.e. equality for the select. In
conditions of antique classical democracy, the citizens acted as
fighters who had their permanent place in a row (in a phalanx or in
Roman legions). A citizen is the one who is ready to sacrifice his life
for the sake of his motherland at any moment. And such relationship
establishes the firm basis of the inseparability of rights.

The further evolution of "democracy" was a process of breaking off such
relationship, and even bringing about its total elimination. That’s to
say, the existing political rights (do not confuse with human rights
in general) are not based on anything at all.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the American "model" democracy
of the "founding fathers" granted suffrage to around 12 percent of the
mature population. By general calculations, most different property
qualifications exceeded the amount of 1 million Dollars. This was
actually the real "elite". Alexander Hamilton, one of the "founding
fathers", called the people "a big monster". And they first of all
viewed democracy as a tool for bridling that "monster".

Broadening the circle of the people having the right to benefit from
democracy became possible as a result of overcoming a certain property
and educational barriers, but most importantly, by way of improving
the public consciousness and the most different levers of governing
the political institutions. That’s to say, the process of broadening
democracy was accompanied by building compensation mechanisms.

What is known as a "multi-party system", "independent press" and "free
elections" are the tools of control over the same parties, press
and elections. Furthermore, those tools are constantly improved,
with the financial tool being the most effective. No one except
the representatives of the economic and political elite has the
opportunity to operate parties and mass media and provide funding
for electoral campaigns.

In conditions of modern democracy, when the mechanisms of compensating
the expression of will have reached to perfection, the role of "masses"
in political processes is reduced to a minimum. And the actual process
becomes an imitation of a struggle, when the principal political
parties do not differ from one another in terms of their world-outlook.

It is ridiculous that the constructive opposition is normally ignored
in our reality and accused of cooperation with the authorities. We
consider that the representatives of a "genuine opposition" are those
who at least accuse the authorities of crimes against humanity and
make appeals for overthrowing them by the use of violence.

The attempt of the Council of Europe to impose formal democracy on
our country, without giving it permission to build neither permanent
nor temporary compensation mechanisms, pursues a goal to degrade and
corrupt the state which will spontaneously lose the features of a
sovereign subject and even be deprived of the ability to govern itself.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress