Friday, July 24 2015 11:21

 Armenia seems to partially return to the mists of socialism building times when a “Party” would take every single decision. At least this conclusion springs to mind when one tries to analyze the draft constitutional reforms. 

 

Fortunately or unfortunately, the reformed Constitution can hardly cause any changes in our fossilized swamped domestic policy. It is well known, that neither government nor Baghramyan 26 solves the main issues in Armenia. At some instigation there is only one head to solve those issues. The solutions are made public after Council meeting of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia.

 

Therefore, it is obvious that the retouched Constitution bears no expectations in respect of bringing any changes in the country management principles. Only the form will be subjected to changes, the content, however, will remain the same. The initiators of these “reforms” do need the changes in the form for they desperately need to disassociate from the well known “Lame duck” expression, which is widely used in the international political vocabulary of democratic countries.

 

The new president, who has been reelected for the second term, does not suffer from legitimacy abundance after the Mar 1, 2008 tragic events. No wonder that after he is mulling over the reproduction of the ruling elite in Armenia after his reelection.

 

The Mar 1, 2008 tragic post-electoral events, the Feb 2013 unrest, the youth’s civil activity uprisal have proved to the authorities they need to get rid of the presidential elections institute. Given the growing discontent with the authorities’ current pyramid, these very authorities realize that presidential elections have turned into a dangerous, expensive and unattainable luxury.

 

The way out was too conspicuous and simple as the stroke of a genius. Even a shallow analysis of the initial version of the first 7 chapters of the reformed Constitution clearly depicts the aforementioned purposes of the plan. 

 

Given the wordings in the reformed project Sargsyan will not necessarily have to be the president, parliament speaker or even PM to rule the country to the full. Running the office of the “party” leader will suffice him for the “party” will be the very body to appoint the both the president, the parliament speaker and the PM.  RPA is the very party of a single man given its peculiarities and the lack of political or party culture in Armenia.  

 

The “party” – in this case the Republican Party of Armenia – actually receives a termless monopoly to rule Armenia. There are still two obstacles for that, particularly, the referendum to put the constitutional reforms in practice and the parliamentary elections. Given the unconditional importance of these two expressions of people’s will, there is no doubt that in both cases the entire traditional complex of measures typical to Armenian elections will be launched. The matter concerns the swelled (in all senses) state machine with its punitive law-enforcement bodies and the bureaucracy with its tremendous arsenal of administrative resources. Almost all the previous elections demonstrated that such a conglomerate is successful.     

 

In this light, the attempts to thoroughly analyze the rather controversial provisions of the draft reformed Constitution are senseless and doomed to failure. The only noteworthy thing is the procedure of appointment of the de jure first person of the country – the prime minister. The authors of “the reforms” naturally assign that function to the Parliament. The draft “reforms” completely refuses the first-past-the-post deputies and implies compulsory “solid majority” of one of the parties in the future parliament.   

 

Point 4 of Article 89 of Chapter 4 of the “reformed” draft Constitution says that if no “stable parliamentary majority” is formed following the first round of parliamentary elections, a second round will be held involving two political forces with the biggest number of votes. It is this parliamentary majority, in our case “the party” that will be empowered to appoint the first person of the state – the prime minister. That first person will naturally depend on the “party” leader.     

 

Thus, one has to state that formally refusing all state positions but retaining the actual power, Serzh Sargsyan is going to become an Armenian Bidzina Ivanishvili. The Georgian billionaire came to power in Georgia due to his billions and the real public support. Serzh Sargsyan has decided to remain at power due to the “party” and its billions. As regards the public debates on the reformed draft Constitution, it is naïve and a little bit funny to discuss it.