THE NECESSITY OF FORMING A NEW POLITICAL ARENA
Rouben Darbinyan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on Aug 05, 2008
Armenia

As shown by the recent attempts, the consistent efforts towards
exacerbating the internal political situation come to confirm the
fact that the radical opposition has constructed its tactics of fight
against the authorities without considering the moods of their own
people but rather, based upon the objective of receiving support from
abroad, more specifically, having the PACE intervene in the internal
affairs of our country.

Having suffered a defeat during the "spring and summer campaigns", the
radical camp has recorded only one "achievement" for the time being. It
includes the well-known Resolutions passed by the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe and the threats of applying sanctions
against Armenia. In fact, the prospect of exacerbating the country’s
situation is viewed as a condition ensuring the on-going nature of
the struggle.

And to achieve that, it is necessary to collect as many "materials" as
possible in order to prove that the requirements of the Parliamentary
Assembly are being ignored by the leadership of Armenia. In this case,
there may be guarantees that the PACE will pass negative conclusions.

What we have as a result is the authorities’ mitigated attitude towards
the participants of the March 1-2 mass disorders on the one hand and
0D the radicals’ ardent desire to hold the successive unauthorized
demonstration or march at any price on the other.

In what other country does the opposition construct its tactics
based upon the logic of acting against its own state with the help
of Strasburg?

Separate negative phenomena characteristic to the internal political
struggle in Armenia exist in all the post-Soviet countries, but none
of them suffers from the "Strasburg disease" which so characteristic
to our native opposition.

It is gradually developing into a specific kind of syndrome of
worshiping alien values – an ailment that has been characteristic
to our nation since the dawn of times, the only difference being the
fact that all this happens in the specific circumstances peculiar to
the 21st century.

The attempts aiming to exacerbate the country’s situation artificially,
by way of furnishing Strasburg with materials, are nothing more than
a process of forming new and new levers required for influencing
our country.

Therefore, such practice has nothing to do with the level of democracy
in Armenia and the issue of overcoming the concrete flaws, errors
and gaps well-known to all of us.

If the goal, i.e. the democratization of the country, has changed
into a tool of foreign intervention aiming to achieve a shift of
government in the country, it means that we are dealing with unknown
groups of people acting beyond the framework of the i nstitutes of
an independent statehood, and their activities create new and new
threats for the whole country.

In conditions of the continuous increase of such threats, we don’t
think that either the implementation of some PACE Resolution or,
for instance, the policy of going to Strasburg and giving relevant
explanations will be enough.

It is necessary from now on to think about the formation of such a
political arena on which both the pro-government and the pro-opposition
poles will, regardless their convictions and the sharpness of the
struggle between each other, really consider Armenia a sovereign state.

Among them, there may certainly be some forces and activists each of
which will try to work with certain foreign forces to the benefit and
glory of his own country. However, their foreign preferences should
never become superior to the interests of the country and its people.

The pro-Levon activists have started to gradually detach themselves
from the political arena. It remains for all this to mark the beginning
of a more in-depth process aimed at curing the political arena.

And to achieve that it is necessary to demonstrate a will to neutralize
the vicious closed circle which is in the process of formation and
to kill the metastases of the "Strasburg disease".