This Article in
Armenian

There are less than two months left before elections but one can state that the
political arena of Armenia is exhausted. Although the last elections raised
public emotions, no growth in political developments afterwards was registered.
On the contrary, the events of 2003-2004 resulted in dissolution of the
opposition and the society was forced out of political life, bright illustration
of which is its attitude towards referendum on the Constitution.

On the one side, there is an atmosphere of apathy and public disillusionment,
and on the other side, political parties are not able to provide the electorate
with clear ideas, which would promote public activism. Political forces directed
all their efforts towards “clean struggle”, which is realized in demonstration
of the force and emotions.

At this point, no political party has a clearly defined vision on the ways of
development of the Armenian society. There are just minor differences between
the opposition and governmental parties. The opposition does not have the
administrative and economic resources, which the Republican Party, Bargavach
Hayastan and Dashnaktsutyun have. At the same time, the ideological packages
presented by the governmental and oppositional parties to the public have almost
no difference. They talk about European integration, economic growth, fighting
against corruption and poverty, resolution of the Karabakh issue and other. The
distinction is only in one point. The pro-governmental forces suggest that to
resolve all these issues we need to maintain stability, which means not changing
the shaped political reality and allowing the present powerful forces to
continue their constructive activity. The oppositional forces suggest that the
only way to solution of the mentioned issues is replacing the current powers
with themselves. No other distinctive ideas and concepts on how to resolve the
contemporary political crisis are proposed by either side.

We should mention two political parties - communists and dashnaks – with clear
political grounds. However, the problem here is that these parties are directed
by rigid concepts already outdated for the current political reality.

Lack of ideas in the political stage brought to a situation, when concrete
people became the main drivers of political processes. The party of Gagik
Tsarukyan does not have any other distinctions but that it is the party of Gagik
Tsarukyan. It is symbolical that “Bargavatch Hayastan” (“Prosperous Armenia”)
political party has about 400 thousand members. The number of faceless party
members, in its turn, outlines the personality of Gagik Tsarukyan, who presents
the idea of prosperous Armenia without presenting any concrete concepts and
actions for realization of the idea.

The personalities directing the opposition actions are Robert Kocharyan and
Serzh Sargsyan, as the opposition believes that moving these individuals out of
political arena is the only remedy for the Republic of Armenia. In fact, in
other aspects, the wishes of the opposition almost do not differ from the
direction taken by Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan.

Notwithstanding that political parties often disagree on domestic and foreign
politics, in fact, the disagreements are of minot or abstract character. For
example, in foreign relations political parties have their own preferences in
regards to Russia, the USA and the European Union, but the preferences are
presented in the form of general declarations. The government also does not find
anything better thatn abstract complimentarism, as a result of which the foreign
politics of the republic has been passed to external forces.

Thus, in terms of the ideological vacuum within the political elite, it is
difficult to assume that the elections, regardless their outcomes, will bring
any changes for Armenia.

On the other side, the indifferent attitude of the society does not encourage
real activism of political parties, and the elections are expected to be simply
a show of power. Most probably, the elections will result in further ideological
inflation and public disappointment. However, the negative influence of the
political vacuum may encourage new forces with new ideology to appear on the
scene. The present political arena does not correspond to the needs of the
society. The political powers moved towards self-sufficient position, in which
the majority of population does not see any function for itself.