Author: Hambik Zargarian

Although developments in neighbouring Armenia do not affect Georgia in any way, neighbours exist to make you interested in what happens in their country. In the meantime, what is happening there is quite interesting and instructive: New Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is swinging wide a gigantic axe with all his might, which results in heads rolling on an industrial scale.

Arrests of corrupt officials necessary, but no guarantee of reforms

Taking into account that Armenia is a post-Soviet country with all defects characteristic of this area, he will have to swing the axe for quite some time to come. Incidentally, although the arrests of representatives of the previous government do show that intentions are serious, they nevertheless do not guarantee that any reforms will be carried out. A new broom has swept clean and in a new manner in the whole world in any century and in any era. Representatives of previous governments have always been foredoomed to travails in prison without any sympathy, but this has rarely led to any concrete results. Former high-level public officials have been arrested and others have occupied their places and everything has gone around in a circle.

Correspondingly, arrests we can now see in Yerevan are a mandatory but not the only condition, which ensures the dismantlement of the firm corrupt system Armenians revolted against. The example of Ukraine has shown that one set of corrupt officials may enthusiastically be replaced by others. Incidentally, the example of Ukraine is not quite correct, as no one has seriously been thrown into jail there, only into a garbage can [reference to Party of Regions MP Vitaliy Zhuravskyy, who was thrown into a garbage can in 2014]…

Russia interested in keeping 'bandit, bureaucratic' system unchanged

It is difficult to judge now what is going to happen next and how far-reaching Nikol Pashinyan's plans are going to be. It is obvious that compared to Georgia of 2004, the corrupt Armenian elite will put up fiercer resistance. It should be born in mind that everything was so rotten during the last years of [late Georgian President Eduard] Shevardnadze's rule that there was no one, who could put up resistance. All more or less important politicians scattered away, expecting austere men in leather coats to appear in their homes.

Unlike Tbilisi of 2004, the system in Yerevan of 2018 is keeping head down, preparing to resist, particularly as they have a powerful ally – Russia, which is interested in keeping a unified corrupt bandit and bureaucratic management system in all adjacent countries.

Young officials educated in the West, whose manner of thinking is not based on the criteria of rent-seeking and cheating, are Russia's worst nightmare. Correspondingly, it will do all it can to keep the system unchanged. Taming Pashinyan is the Kremlin's main objective in relations with Armenia.

However, let us leave Russia aside, imagining that it does not exist at all. Even without it, the objectives the new Armenian government is facing can drive anyone to a heart attack.

Two choices

It is known that reforms in a country consist of two parts – popular and unpopular. Nikol Pashinyan is now taking popular steps, throwing officials and criminals behind the bars. It has now come even to an ex-president [Robert Kocharyan arrested on 27 July]. People are all steamed up and the popularity of the strong leader is growing. At all times, people have watched with delight how formerly inviolable leaders were done away with. Taking into account the fact that the heads of those, who robbed the country a couple of months ago, wringing it out to prostration, are rolling with the use of belt conveyor system, there is nothing strange in the fact that Armenians like frequent arrests.

However, the number of heavyweight aces, who are to be arrested, will inevitably expire in a few months and people will also stop reacting. The popular part of reforms will end here and if Pashinyan really aspires to change the country, he will have to pass to the next stage – the unpopular one.

The opinion is widespread in the post-Soviet area that there are bad governments, foul oligarchs, and various kinds of bandits and at the same time, they are surrounded by people, who are warm and fuzzy and so elevated that they do not even step on the ground when walking.

Alas, Pashinyan and the whole of Armenian society will have to get first-hand experience to become convinced that the disease is universal and affects everyone. The new government will have to move deep into the depths and even if everything is all right when destroying large dark schemes built by the previous government and business, things will change when the punitive machine moves lower into the rank and file.

The Armenian artillery is now delivering localised strikes, but it will have to deliver blows on squares tomorrow and people are not likely to like this. The new team will have to put everything that was done improperly for many years and become habitual in the proper way, break small schemes, and rank-and-file and universal corruption. The attitude to such corruption is quite different. "People are trying to survive as they can," [people usually say].

It is there that the hardest and uncompromising struggle awaits the incumbent Armenia government, a struggle with petty officials, who steal negligibly, the road police that takes negligible amounts of money from drivers.

They will effectively have to fight against the whole nation, who, like all others in the post-Soviet area, are accustomed to stealing negligibly [with thoughts like] "Oligarchs are of course, rascals, but we… We are not doing anything terrible, are we?"

It is on this wave of dissatisfaction that the existing system has a chance of revenge. Propaganda is going to be serious.

They will soon begin to hate Pashinyan and he will find himself between the devil and the deep sea: To extend reforms deep into the depths, break long-standing rules, and get fierce hatred from hundreds of thousands of people, who will be left without incomes, or to limit himself to arrests of top officials without aggravating relations with his own people and finally becoming hated because of having offered hopes and done nothing.

In short, Pashinyan will go down the drain anyway and it is up to him to choose: He must either become a dull politician, who no one will remember, when he departs, or go down in history as a reformer at the expense of hatred of most of his people.

Comparison with Georgian government

It is not an easy choice, but it is inevitable. There is no third option. The favourite Soviet _expression_ "do things without damaging anyone's interests" is not going to come true. Our [Georgian]incumbent government is trying to achieve precisely this: To establish order without arresting anyone; to reduce bureaucratic expenses, leaving salaries unchanged; to build strategic hydroelectric power plants in a manner that will not anger local stupid people. As the [Russian] phrase goes, to both eat a roll and… [a scabrous ending follows] Well, you understood, what I mean…

The result is appropriate – nothing. And the Armenian government should also realise this. Everything is going to be decided in the coming few months. If the Pashinyan team goes into the depths and dares to touch the interests of "ordinary Armenians", success is possible. If they follow the path of the [ruling] Georgian Dream [party], there is going to be no progress.

As the saying goes, you have to choose, but be cautious…