BELATED STIMULANT FOR THE OPPOSITION
Editorial
Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on May 30, 2008
Armenia
What’s the goal of the State Department?
The reports published yesterday by the State Department of the United
States and `Amnesty International’ human rights organization depict
Armenia’s situation in the sphere of democracy and human rights in dark
colors, based on the results of 2006 and 2007.
The State Department report is devoted to the human rights issues of
the year 2008 which is just approaching the `equator’; as to `Amnesty
International’, it has tried to recall each single flaw in the sphere
of the development of democracy in our country.
From the very start, there is an impression that these two documents,
which were published on the same day, supplement each other, and only
the organizations are different. Furthermore, the document of the State
Department, the more powerful organization, is more like a strictly
generalized attempt aiming to solve certain problems through unfounded
accusations rather than a report.
It is somehow possible to understand `Amnesty International’ human
rights organization’s attempts of enumerating the flaws observed in the
sphere of the protection of freedom of speech in 2007, as the year was
full of political events.
At the same time, it is extremely difficult and very often impossible
to consider the State Department’s document a report, as it mostly
contains assessments `filling’ the gap. The thing is that, by
representing the well-known developments concerning the first half of
2008, a period of exacerbated internal political struggles, and adding
to them unfounded and unproven allegations, the authors of the document
use the sum effect of all this for drawing certain political
conclusions. That is, to evaluate the Armenian government’s activity in
the sphere of the protection of human rights as unsatisfactory.
This gives rise to several questions.
First: Which government of Armenia do they mean, as Armenia has had 2
governments in the course of the past 5 months?
Second: What facts does the State Department lean on when advancing
purely contemplative allegations concerning the `stuffing of the ballot
boxes’, `multiple voting’, `pressure against the pro-opposition press’
– things that were not found in the assessments of the OSCE and other
observation missions?
Third: On what grounds does the State Department insist that `the
citizens in Armenia are unable to freely change their government’ when
the international observation missions estimated both the 2007 and the
2008 elections mostly in line with the international standards.
Does this show that the OSCE and the other observation missions were
mistaken in their assessments, so the US State Department is now trying
to re-edit their conclusions by publishing the current report? However,
the desire is not a requisite condition yet; such highly reputable
state structures are required to publish serious facts.
Moreover, after all that happened in Armenia, our country has started
to slowly come around, overcome the extreme tension of the
post-electoral atmosphere, bring to life the proposals enshrined in the
PACE Resolution and seek ways for a dialogue between the authorities
and the opposition. In such conditions, the international community has
to do its best for contributing to the further development of this
process.
However, instead of doing that, the State Department report makes the
previous assessments on the February 19 elections stricter, and `mixes’
them with the accusations made by the Armenian opposition and never
proven by the Constitutional Court. By doing this, they seem to be
making hints to the opposition that it’s time to take more active steps
and re-stage the well-known post-electoral developments. We believe
that including the `unproven facts’ on the February 19 elections in the
State Department report may play the role of a political `stimulant’
offered to the opposition. Moreover, such allegations may be used as a
pretext for suspending the assistance provided to Armenia under the
`Millennium Challenges’ program.
It’s quite possible that hints about all this may be dropped in the
Karabakh settlement process as well, because the same tendencies are
now observed in the relationship between Azerbaijan and a number of
Western organizations.
Instead of giving some time to the country busy implementing the
proposals of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and
contributing to the efforts towards relaxing the internal political
tension in Armenia, the assessments contained in the State Department
report may push the opposition (which is preparing for the 20th of
June) to new steps.
Is this the goal the State Department is seeking to achieve?
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
