WHAT DO THE POLITICAL FORCES DO?
Armen Tsaturyan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
09 Oct 2008
Armenia

The native political life has always been famous for the quantitative
growth and qualitative degradation of the parties. But the developments
that take place during this autumn, to be more precise – their
absence is nothing more than a process of the evaporation of the
political forces.

Usually in our reality politics becomes lively one year before the
regular state elections and that tendency is maintained at least six
months during the post election period.

In the past, the before mentioned cases were excluded only if Armenia
was at the risk of foreign political developments, which had impact
on our country.

But the present political autumn proves that even in case of similar
force-majeure situations the political life won’t liven up in our
reality.

Russian-Georgian conflict has just finished which gave rise to serious
geopolitical changes in the region. The world has appeared in the
clutches of a big crisis, which can very soon knock at the door of
our country.

Moreover there are lots of reasons to be engaged in politics, to
consolidate the positions and the influence of their own parties. The
elections of local self-governmental bodies are in process, where
the issue of winning is rather important for providing success in
the next parliamentary elections.

Besides that the country’s principal financial document, the state
budget of 2009 has been introduced to society. Ministry of Diaspora,
Public Council is in the process of formation, for the first time in
our history the President addressed the parliament and the people, etc.

We can continue to list the before mentioned events of political
significance. But what is the attitude of the political forces
towards them?

The representatives of coalition from time to time with evident
laziness make judgments about all this. But the pro-oppositional
parties united in the framework of Armenian Pan National Congress
gather once per month to abuse the authorities and to admire
Ter-Petrosyan’s linguistic abilities. Whereas if the abuses
regularly heard from Matenadaran’s platform is really senseless, it
is becoming very difficult to find any concrete political contents
in Ter-Petrosyan’s speeches.

As for all the other parties, they don’t show any signs of life.

It turns out that the several dozens of parties registered in Armenia
are no more political subjects. And but for the National Assembly,
where the pro-oppositional and the pro-governmental forces "ex officio"
have to say something regarding the matters of concern, then we can
presume that the political processes have stopped in our reality.

And but for the parliamentary investigation of March 1-2 developments
in the "emergency store" of the political aut umn or the obligatory
discussions of the bills submitted to the National Assembly, then the
existence of the parties represented in the country’s top legislative
body would fell under suspicion.

Strange but a fact, the impulses of livening up present day political
life are far not the products of the initiatives of the country’s
pro-oppositional parties or the quadrilateral coalition supporting
the authorities but only and only the actions taken by the ruling
executive power. And if that is true then our political-party system
doesn’t fulfill its functions. It is shabby and old in terms of
politics and contents.

Thus we can record that the autumn of 2008 is the beginning of a vacuum
in Armenia’s political life, which can very soon serve as a reason for
the appearance of new forces, because sacred place never remains empty.