RFE/RL Commentary & Analysis

Armenia’s 100 Lost Days

Has Serzh Sarkisian wasted his first 100 days?

July 26, 2008
By Anahit Bakhshian

Dozens of Armenian citizens remain incarcerated in cells and basements
across the country, among them members of parliament, intellectuals, public
figures, and peaceful activists against whom no formal charges have been
brought. They could have been charged or released during the new president’s
first 100 days in office. They were not.

The Armenian judiciary could have affirmed its independence from the
executive branch and handed down an impartial assessment of the February 19
presidential ballot, which was marred by systematic procedural violations
and widespread bribery, intimidation, and fraud. It chose not to do so.

The tragedy of March 1, 2008, when police and security forces descended upon
their own citizens, forcibly dispersed thousands of protesters encamped on
Liberty Square, and later resorted to brute violence that culminated in 10
deaths, could have been evaluated by a commission devoted to establishing
the truth. The government could have invited opposition parties to
participate in that process as equals. It did not.

Opposition groups, and indeed civil society itself, planned peaceful
demonstrations at Liberty Square, the Matenadaran Museum of Ancient
Manuscripts, and other locations in Yerevan. The city administration could
have granted official permission for those demonstrations. It did not.

That retreat from democratic practice has harmed Armenia’s reputation
abroad.

The UN General Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe have both passed one-sided, antihistoric, legally unfounded, and
politically prejudiced resolutions that effectively made those institutions
complicit in Azerbaijan’s aggressive campaign to scuttle the ongoing peace
negotiations and ultimately to annex Nagorno-Karabakh.

That region in 1988 was the first in the former USSR to seize on the
opportunity presented by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of
glasnost in a bid reverse the legacy of Stalin’s divide-and-rule politics
and seek decolonization and independence in full compliance with
international and Soviet law.

Had it been competent and democratic, the Armenian government could have
defeated these partisan, polemical, and duplicitous resolutions, which
designate Nagorno-Karabakh as "occupied" territory. It was not competent and
democratic, so it could not.

The current authorities and the political parties that support them, which
together account for more than 95 percent of parliament deputies despite
having polled a far smaller percentage of votes, have an obligation to reach
out to the opposition, both within parliament and on the street. They have
done neither.

No one can demand or even expect an immediate and total break with the
policies espoused by the previous leadership, although President Serzh
Sarkisian has claimed to have achieved precisely that. But we citizens of
Armenia have demanded immediate action on a number of yes-or-no issues that
could have, and should have, been resolved swiftly — certainly within 100
days of Sarkisian taking office.

But the answer has invariably been negative: No release of political
prisoners. No fair and impartial inquiry into the March 1 violence. No
unrestricted demonstrations for democracy.

Those refusals have damaged Armenia’s international aspirations — and
Karabakh’s. More importantly, they have paralyzed our nation’s trust in
authorities who were elected through deviance, confirmed by blood, crowned
in emergency rule, and inaugurated against a backdrop of crowded prisons.
The real 100-day question is whether these are the aftershocks of a bygone
era or the birth pangs of a new one.

We, the citizens of Armenia, stand firm against the tidal wave of
corruption. We will accept nothing less than a systemic shift in Armenia’s
governance that paves the way for the return of democracy to a land where it
once flourished.

Anahit Bakhshian is chairwoman of the board of the Zharangutiun (Heritage)
party, the sole opposition party represented in the National Assembly. The
views expressed in this commentary are the author’s own and do not
necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL

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