Attempted Revolution

Over a month ago, presidential elections took place in Armenia. The result was what most people expected: a victory for the ruling party and its candidate, Serzh Sarkisian. His main opponent, Levon Ter-Petrossian, the first president of the independent, post-Soviet Republic of Armenia, contested the results and went ahead with his promised protests. Thousands of people gathered in the capital of Yerevan to make clear their discontent with the prevailing situation in the country. Now, Mr. Sarkisian has taken office and the protests, for the most part, have subsided - but not after leaving eight people dead and seeing hundreds put in jail.

As I've expressed here before, I'm not one to unequivocally reject revolution as a means of change. In fact, I believe certain cases - such as the one the Founding Fathers of this country found themselves in during the late 1700s - warrant a revolution to unify a people under a common cause, toward a better society. Nonetheless, this attempted revolution in Armenia was flawed in countless ways and I am loathe to see it take hold with people who should have no business participating in it.

Let us examine the foundation. It is a man whose own ineptitude at leading a nation led to the current state of affairs that he now vociferously attacks. I'm not about to blame the energy crisis or extreme poverty of the (then) recently independent republic on Mr. Ter-Petrossian. But, there were indeed things that were wholly in his control which he could have remedied. For instance, the viral corruption in the police force and in most government institutions was not only allowed to go on under his administration, it was perpetuated to the point of near irreversibility. The taking of political prisoners and the flamboyant suppression of citizens' rights and freedoms were part-and-parcel of Mr. Ter-Petrossian's time in office. Throughout the elections, he went on the offensive about how these poisonous vessels were unabashedly proliferating under the current administration. (For the record, he did indeed apologize for using the same methods himself.) Not only that, he made central to his rhetoric the separation of the background of Mr. Sarkisian and Robert Kocharian (the now former president) and that of his audience: the tidbit that the former two were from Artsakh (Karabakh) and, essentially, not from the "real" Armenia, like the voters he was courting. For no reason other than this vile attempt to drive yet another wedge amongst the Armenian people am I glad to see that his protests are now over and that his mouth is shut as he is under house-arrest in the mansion he became entitled to when he agreed to step down a decade ago.

What is most curious to me is how easily Armenians (especially, of course, those in Yerevan) seemed to gobble this up, much like a starved peacock. There have been reports that I've read and those that I've heard from sources in Armenia that being a "Karabakhtsi" is now an insult. It was already clear before the election that many people believed that the war in Karabakh was the cause for the difficulties in the early years of the republic. That may true and it probably is! So what? Did those people forget what the fight was for? It was not an act of benevolence on behalf of Armenia Armenians for Artsakh Armenians; it was a fight between all Armenians and those who were massacring them and those who were refusing to allow them to be free. I can assure you that those people now living in Artsakh are living in much more dismal conditions than those people in Yerevan but they will be the only thing between the attackers and Yerevan: I'd like to see what their opinion is of Artsakhtsis if that ever becomes a possibility. Mr. Ter-Petrossian should be ashamed of himself for promulgating any such thinking as an educated man and supposed statesman.

I will likely receive the retort that the people are fed up with the status quo of the country and they are finally willing to show it. Possibly. Although, let's not forget that one way this faux-revolution took hold was through the support of many high-level government officials and businessmen. What was their impetus? Having the comfortable lives the people in the streets yearned for, I would like to know what brought them out to the protests to speak. Perhaps it was a sense of allegiance to the man who had initially allowed them to pillage and rob the people they were attempting (somewhat successfully) to instigate. I'm also aware of participants in the protests who were not at all part of the constituency of the disaffected: they were simply privileged persons who I'll call "hopeful democratizers". Their intention was not to improve their own lot but to bring forth democracy. Noble objectives, indeed, but misplaced in the support of an unlikely reformer.

Ultimately, Mr. Ter-Petrossian was the wrong choice for the people to latch on to as their savior. It is interesting that none of the other candidates - those with better platforms and cleaner records - were pursued with any of the zeal afforded to Mr. Ter-Petrossian. It simply underscores the shallowness of a struggle when, clearly, the people are not inspired for change of their own accord, but are mobilized by the irresponsible musings of a has-been.


Note: I find the jailing of innocent people and the violence perpetrated against benign citizens to be abhorrent. I strongly support the right of people to assemble peacefully and the aforementioned was not meant as any sort of approbation for the methods used against the people to encourage them to disband. This was solely an examination of the reasons behind the protests and my associated opinions.

Post Script

Armenians continue to think they are being left behind. They see revolution and apparent democracy in Georgia and they want to have it to. They forget that Georgia is a fragile composite of sub-states that the central government hardly controls. They begin to believe that since there was no "democratic shock", there needs to be one. They forget that democracy is a process that is built upon through generations of work and the reformation of mindsets. They see corruption and use it as the source to maintain their lost hope for the future of Armenia. They forget that they are complicit in this process by submitting to the requests of bribery. What sets apart successful peoples is the assumption of responsibility upon oneself - the individual - to improve the society that one lives in. This inherently implies that people should not look to government for change but create it themselves. Some think that the best way to do this is through revolution, peaceful or otherwise. I defy them to take that revolution to their spirits and resolve to dedicate their energies to productivity against all odds, to betterment in times of destitution, and to triumph when all seems lost.