(Saturday, September 29)
“Zhamanak” says that one of critics’ arguments is that if snap parliamentary elections in Armenia were held now Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his allies would win as massively as they did in the September 23 municipal elections in Yerevan. This, they say, would leave Pashinian’s government without strong checks and balances. The paper disagrees, saying that many democracies around the world have a single dominant party. “The key question is whether there is a society which would no longer put up with anyone’s totalitarian or authoritarian rule,” it says. “The events that occurred [in Armenia] just a few months ago showed that there is such a society here.”
“Haykakan Zhamanak” says that there seems to be no genuine and credible opposition in Armenia at the moment. The paper edited by Pashinian’s wife, Anna Hakobian, says that Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK) is “too discredited” to take on that role. “This is little consolation,” it says. “Now it is imperative to have opposition which is strong and, so to speak, legitimate and real, which will fight against the government’s mistakes in an open and substantiated manner and without any fear of losing some levers. But no political force is keen to be in opposition.” The paper suggests says forces other than the HHK are waiting for a major failure of Pashinian.
“Past” says that the Armenian civil society has also undergone radical changes in the last few months. The paper points out that most of the 57 candidates of Pashinian’s My Step bloc elected to Yerevan’s new municipal council are former NGO or other civic activists. “Both in the city council and the government there are many people that were involved in these spheres of public life before the revolution … Now that the majority of the Armenian civil society is part of the government, bears concrete political responsibility and is effectively positioning itself as politicians the civic sector has a chance to rethink its activities, to restructure itself from scratch and, most importantly, to return to its lost and forgotten roots and its spontaneous and self-sufficient essence,” it says.
(Artur Papian)
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