Distorted Perceptions
Recently, a lot of people ask me why I’ve decided to all of a sudden speak up about Armenian politics and why I wasn’t more vocal in the past. They are initially shocked and disappointed that anyone could view the developments since April 2018 in any light but a positive one. The primary reasons for this visceral response are the perceptions that have been formed as a result of decades of misinformation.
One of the main products of the misinformation campaign has been a widespread yet misguided belief that the leadership in Armenia has always been made up of criminals. It’s important to note that this type of criticism rarely has any substance. Rather, it is based on the primitive thought that the leaders have not cared for the country or its people and that they have been busy looting the country instead of taking steps to improve the socioeconomic situation of its population. To a large extent, decisions made by the government were not viewed based on their merits. Instead, they were immediately characterized as new machinations for cheating the people and were thus rejected without substantive discussions. A concrete example of this is the mandatory cumulative pension program that was implemented by Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan and, ironically, became a tool for his political opponents to remove him from office.
Soon after coming to power, the government of Nikol Pashinyan decided to follow through with the program with minor modifications, even though he and members of his team, including one of the leaders of the dem.am movement, Mane Tandilyan, had been vocal opponents of the mandatory contributions. Pashinyan’s justification was that, in the past, the reservations regarding the law were centered on the lack of trust in government and not the merits of the law itself, and that since trust had been restored, they could proceed with the plan. The absurdity of this statement was not lost on the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Tandilyan, who submitted a resignation letter but was convinced by Pashinyan to stay on.
The canonical example of the deviation between reality and perception in Armenia is the “Experience versus perception of corruption” chart in EBRD’s Life in Transition report. In the “Corruption in the transition region” section, the authors call out the anomalous results observed in Armenia, “35 per cent of Armenian respondents say that unofficial payments are usually or always necessary but only around 10 percent of respondents state that they or a family member have actually made such unofficial payments, which is considerably lower than the reported perception of unofficial payments.”
At a high level, there are several causes for this skew in perception. First and foremost, Armenians have not had sustained statehood for over six centuries. During that time, we have been the subjects of the Persian, Ottoman, and Russian empires, waiting endlessly for the chance to govern ourselves. As a result, there were inflated expectations of what sovereignty and, for that matter, democracy would entail. When faced with reality, there was a large wave of disillusionment. Add to this the objective fact that the Armenian economy has not been able to secure a high standard of living for all segments of society and you have a situation ripe for upheaval. When nearly twenty-five percent of the population live under the poverty line, it’s not difficult to convince people that their quality of life would be greatly improved by a change of government.
A cursory look at the original Soviet countries post-independence reveals two trends. The model of governance is either rooted in authoritarianism (e.g., Central Asia, Belarus) or the country has suffered from a steady stream of shocks, loss of territories, and struggling economies (e.g., Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova) or a combination of the two (e.g., Azerbaijan). Somehow, Armenia had managed to emerge from all of this seemingly unscathed. Faced with blockade, lacking natural resources, shaken by the massive destruction caused by the Spitak earthquake, and disrupted by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economy, Armenia had won a decisive victory in the Artsakh war, had achieved relative security in a hostile region, and had developed substantial political and economic institutions.
Nearly three decades of relative political stability and continuity is the exception, not the rule for comparable countries, especially without the implementation of authoritarian policies. The freedoms of speech, assembly, and press enjoyed by society allowed the dissemination of all sorts of information, some factual, some manipulative, but most of it damaging to the perceptions among its citizens. Add to this a directed campaign of demonization of past authorities and it’s a wonder that Armenia lasted this long without a successful upheaval.
The Diaspora also has a significant role in the formation of perceptions. It’s hard to generalize when talking about several million people strewn across continents, but there are some commonalities that can be mentioned for the purpose of this discussion. Being geographically disconnected from Armenia, it is natural for people to lose touch with the reality in the country. There are a number of other confounding factors that make it more challenging for a diasporan to correctly assess the developments in Armenia.
On average, the farther away a person is, the less likely they are to travel to the homeland. So the Armenians in Moscow, for instance, have the luxury of traveling to Armenia several times a year, whereas many living in Sydney or Los Angeles have never visited the country. The other confounding factor is the language barrier. Most of our compatriots living outside the homeland cannot read Armenian, which means they miss out on the bulk of the content published by the local media. Worse still, by only reading about Armenia in other languages, they get an inevitably skewed view of the events in Armenia. For Armenians who primarily consume content in English, they are limited to reading the likes of Azatutyun, CivilNet, EVN Report, Hetq, and Eurasianet, hardly representative of the breadth of opinion in Armenia.
The cultural and political differences in the adopted countries of diasporans also has a significant impact on their perspective. Armenians living in Georgia, Ukraine, or Russia are living in the same sphere, have a lot in common in terms of their day-to-day experiences, and can better understand the shortcomings of the homeland. On the other hand, an Armenian from Canada has a very different set of expectations when it comes to politics, economics, and culture and inevitably projects those beliefs onto the homeland. If the experience and expertise of developed countries is cautiously imported and integrated into Armenian life, it can have a tremendously positive impact; however, forcefully implanting these ideas into a fundamentally different society can also have disastrous effects.
The best example that demonstrates what not to do as a diasporan is Ara Manoogian’s decade-long groundless smear campaign against All-Armenia Fund. Sadly, he merely added fuel to the fire, since his views were already shared by a non-trivial segment of Armenians worldwide.
The effect of the Diaspora in propagating and sometimes amplifying the “country is not a country” (երկիրը երկիր չէ) narrative cannot be overstated. These sentiments are especially prevalent among the constituents of the latest wave of migration out of Armenia, after independence. Having left the country due to socioeconomic problems, many of these individuals have a strong bias towards the practical concerns of achieving financial security. They are less concerned with the adverse effects of living outside of the homeland, including the inevitability of assimilation, not least because their Armenian identity and lifestyle remain largely unchanged after leaving the homeland. Naturally, this cohort also has direct contact with family and friends still residing in Armenia and often supports them with remittances. The combined effect of all of these factors, along with the strong desire to be reunited with loved ones, is that the new wave of diasporans serves as a powerful magnet, constantly growing stronger and drawing more people out of the homeland. For those that aren’t able to leave, they are left with the bitterness of having to live in a seemingly inferior country, where, according to those who have left, things are so much worse along so many dimensions.
The inherent skew in perception that developed over the years due to the factors described above has been further fueled by negativity and confirmation biases, especially coming from the Diaspora. Because of a lack of reliable information and genuine interest in the political situation in Armenia, most people only pay attention to the country when there is a crisis. For instance, nobody seemed to notice the Constitutional Court’s 1999 decision that ArmenTel’s monopoly was unconstitutional, the official breakup of the monopoly in 2004, the subsequent liberalization of the telecommunications sector in 2007, and the resulting competition between Beeline, VivaCell, Ucom, and other providers, making mobile and internet services inexpensive and widely accessible. Reforms in telecom directly spurred growth of the Information and Communication Technologies sector, which provides high-wage employment to thousands of engineers, making up nearly six percent of GDP in 2017. As of February 2019, the ICT sector employed nearly 23 thousand employees, of which 11 thousand work in the tech industry.
Between 2002 and 2007, the Armenian economy consistently boasted double-digit GDP growth, earning the title of “Caucasian Tiger” in a World Bank report in 2007. During this six-year period, the economy more than doubled. As a result, from 2004 to 2006, Armenia recorded three consecutive years of positive net migration.
People took for granted the $160 million investment by Eduardo Eurnekian’s Corporacion America to build a new terminal at Zvartnots Airport, which was named the best airport in CIS in 2013. When Armavia went bankrupt that year, the Armenian government decided to implement an open skies policy, resulting in an uptick in passenger traffic. But nobody seemed to take notice.
For years, naysayers insisted that there was an unbreakable monopoly on the import of many basic foodstuffs and that, for this reason, foreign supermarket chains would not be able to compete with local chains like Yerevan City. Then the French retailer Carrefour opened its first supermarket in Yerevan Mall in 2015 and its second store in October 2018, busting yet another in a long line of myths.
In the past, opposition parties would often publish a list of demands for electoral reform. Chief among these were a transition to a fully proportional list, the installment of video cameras at polling places, and the publishing of voter lists after elections. These measures, along with electronic voter registration systems, were implemented by the ruling Republican Party in 2016 in time for the 2017 parliamentary elections, significantly reducing the possibility of multiple voting. By using a multi-sheet ballot, the government also eliminated the practice of carousel voting. All of these institutional reforms fell on deaf ears.
Instead, many only remember the assassinations of October 27, the clashes between protesters and police on March 1, the Electric Yerevan demonstrations, the casualties and loss of several hundred hectares during the April War, and the Sasna Tsrer terrorist attack. It would seem to the spectator that Armenia was a chaotic place where all of society was in agreement that the government was pillaging and murdering its own people.
The skew in perception that had developed over the years had created ripe conditions for what took place in spring 2018. The factor that contributed directly to the success of the movement was the impression of a critical mass that Nikol Pashinyan successfully created with the help of a number organizations and media outlets during the days immediately preceding Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation. There were many components in this effort, including the involvement of various famous and influential individuals.
An entire arsenal of manipulative tactics were used to create a suitable atmosphere. For instance, in a video that went viral, a man stands on one side of a barbed-wire barricade, shouting at one of the riot policemen on the other side named Ashot, calling on him to not use force since Ashot’s grandmother and other family members were among the protesters. Later, the speaker confirmed that he had made up Ashot and his grandmother to show that even the family members of police officers were joining the movement and that the police was up against the whole of the Armenian population. Needless to say, this resonated with the masses and they began to feel increasingly confident that the movement was widely supported and hence righteous and necessary.
On the day of Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation, a member of Pashinyan’s team, Eduard Aghajanyan invited on stage a man who claimed to be April War hero Robert Abajyan’s grandfather. He gave an emotional speech in which he announced his support for the campaign. The next day, it became clear that the man wasn’t even related to Abajyan. In fact, Abajyan’s real grandfather called the incident an “ugly show”. The lies were being uncovered but the damage was irreversible. It appeared to casual onlookers that an entire nation was on its feet in support of “justice” and “democracy”. This is when the spectators, not wanting to be left out of the action, became activists themselves, adding a layer to the snowball and increasing its surface area of impact.
Another tool that the protesters used was the presence of young children in the acts of civil disobedience. Underaged individuals were often active participants in the blocking of streets. The involvement of children in political processes is problematic as it is, especially when the nature of the protests – such as blocking streets – risks their safety. On the other hand, the mere presence of young children was used to create an air of safety in order to entice more people to join the movement. The blocking of streets was in effect marketed as a family event, one that everyone could safely participate in. In reality, it turned out this wasn’t far from the truth as the police did little to impede the success of the movement.
The combination of all of the phenomena and tactics described above created sufficient conditions to overcome the threshold necessary to trigger herd mentality, drawing practically everyone into the mob, even if it was for a few weeks or months. It was interesting to see that the current successfully swayed even the most unlikely candidates. People who had long worked with the previous government or praised it for taking positive steps seemed to be convinced overnight that a change of government was necessary and strictly good for the state.
Now that a change of government has taken place, we have the advantage of hindsight to evaluate some of the claims against the previous administration. I won’t go into detail here, but suffice it to say that unprecedented investments haven’t started flowing into the country, improvements in tax collection are incremental and in no way indicative of a shadow economy of the scale that was estimated, there is no trend of mass repatriation, demographic issues such as low birth rate and emigration have not been solved, the political climate is arguably less competitive and less representative, and, most importantly, there is no noticeable improvement in the quality of life of the average Armenian citizen.
Restoring Balance
One way of describing the current situation in Armenia is by likening it to a train that has fallen off its rails. Over the years, the train has been moving steadily forward. At times, the conductor or the engineers have made mistakes, causing delays. Other times, a reckless individual tried to sabotage the normal operations of the train. But the train made most of its stops, people got on and off and could depend on the train arriving according to schedule. What happened two years ago was somebody deliberately left a car on the tracks and the train was derailed. Our job is to get the train back on its tracks.
When the upheaval started in March 2018, a select few individuals spoke up against it. This was disappointing to see but to some extent understandable considering the natural human inclination towards conformity. Soon after the initial euphoria died down and as the new government started appointing officials and making decisions, more and more people became disillusioned. Again, this was not a surprise since it would be a very difficult task to maintain the approval rating that Nikol Pashinyan had at the beginning of his tenure as Prime Minister. Even though Pashinyan’s rating is steadily dropping, especially in Armenia, a large proportion of Armenians are still not able or willing to see the reality. This is why I have decided to speak up. My primary objective is restoring balance to the system by opening people’s eyes to reality. I believe that at the end of the day, most people are rational and, given sufficient information, will draw the proper conclusions. So much misinformation has been spread over the years and so much damage has been done that it’s difficult to convince people of even the most obvious objective truths.
In the process of presenting facts to the public, another goal is to help to moderate expectations, because there’s nothing more dangerous than the inevitable comedown from this euphoric high. Eventually society will see that Pashinyan and his team are not only unable to meet their expectations, but have in many ways set the country back due to their recklessness, inexperience, and arrogance. A lower bar on expectations will make that realization less painful.
Government, if left completely unchecked, can become complacent and disconnected from reality and the effects can be disastrous. The lack of viable opposition to Pashinyan, especially in the early days of his tenure was therefore very alarming. The checks necessary to counterbalance the ruling party need not involve every single citizen, but they need to be robust, involving political parties, news media, and civil society. Generally, only a small percentage of the public expresses real interest in political processes, especially in a country like Armenia where political institutions have not yet had a chance to fully develop. Prior to the change of government, the aforementioned forces were in a sustainable balance, with broad consensus between political parties, high levels of government transparency, and constant oversight by non-governmental organizations. As a result of the events of spring 2018, this balance was suddenly disrupted. This, along with the prevalence of social media usage, meant that everybody “jumped on the bandwagon” and started expressing an opinion on Armenian politics. The voice of the masses was drowning out any rational thought or valid criticism of the new government. This is where grassroots movements emerged to fill the void and challenge popular opinions about the previous and new governments and what had really taken place in the streets of Armenia. Over the past year, arbitrary arrests have been used to attempt to silence grassroots movements. In a recent episode, masked police officers used unnecessary force to arrest six activists, including Adekvad’s Artur Danielian, Veto’s Narek Malian, Civil Consciousness NGO’s Narek Samsonyan, and Blognews’s Konstantin Ter-Nakalyan for no apparent reason. Adding insult to injury, law enforcement chose January 28, Army Day, to carry out this baseless and illegal operation.
In the summer and fall of 2018, Pashinyan’s team made every effort to destroy the reputations of the Republican Party of Armenia and Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the main political parties that could serve as opposition to his administration. By suddenly moving the parliamentary elections to December 2018, Pashinyan guaranteed a landslide victory by leaning on the euphoric feelings of the public, in the process leaving RPA and ARF out of the legislative body and depriving them of that all important platform for voicing concerns. Of the two parties that surpassed the five percent threshold, one is Bright Armenia, which has a platform that is similar to that of the ruling party. In fact, Bright Armenia and Pashinyan’s Civil Contract were members of the Yelq (Way Out) faction in the National Assembly that was formed in April 2017. As a result, there has been little formal opposition to Pashinyan in parliament.
Notwithstanding the above points, Pashinyan had a wonderful opportunity in the spring of 2018 to mend the wounds of the past, bring people together, and present a fresh vision for the future of the state. Instead, he chose divisiveness over unity, fighting with the past instead of looking toward the future, and destroying the old without offering a replacement. Unfounded claims against promising projects such as Ayb, the constant good-versus-evil rhetoric with the accompanying vitriol towards anything “from the past”, arbitrary arrests and endless court cases, including the illegal detention of the second president Robert Kocharyan, have all served as the backdrop of the last two years of discourse in Armenia. This has resulted in the polarization of Armenian society, which everyone can agree is not a healthy state to be in for a country that is facing existential threats. On top of this, at practically every step of the way, the human rights activists, “civil society” representatives, and non-governmental organizations that would never miss an opportunity to sling mud at the previous administration have been silent. The public has become accustomed to following the lead of these opinion makers and is now largely inaudible in the face of bad governance.
People often say that the problems that I am highlighting today existed in the past and that it’s unfair for me to be so critical now if I didn’t speak up before, especially since the new government has only been in power for about two years. There’s a lot baked into this question, so I’m going to try to break it down into its components.
Often, my critics label me an “apologist” of the “regime”. First of all, there’s an inherent symmetry in this argument. In other words, it is almost a certainty that the person making the accusation is themselves more likely to overlook certain flaws of the current government or, at the very least, to not criticize them publicly. This is only natural, since people often put their faith in a political party based on ideologies and policy platforms. It takes a bit of reflection to see that their criticism could very well apply to themselves and is therefore not a valid argument.
I have to admit that some of the problems that I point out today also existed in the past. For this reason, people sometimes call me a hypocrite for being selective in which administration I choose to criticize. In theory, this could be a valid point, but there’s an important subtlety here that deserves to be highlighted. I am usually not pointing out these as flaws that are unique to this administration. Rather, I am attempting to establish realistic expectations of any government and to raise awareness of what our priorities should be going forward. If an issue existed in the past and it exists now, then perhaps it’s not an easy issue to solve. Maybe we should be more patient. Perhaps what we think is an issue is really just a symptom of a far more fundamental problem in our society – a root cause – and will take much more time and work to address. The fact remains, a lot of these issues were the main reasons why people felt they needed a revolution. Since they continue to exist, there has to be more to the story.
For example, one major criticism of the previous government was that they engaged in nepotism and cronyism and that the parliament was made up of Serzh Sargsyan loyalists who were just there to “push buttons”. Since the change of government, Pashinyan’s nephew and brother-in-law have become members of parliament, his childhood friend and godfather was appointed interim mayor of the Prime Minister’s hometown of Ijevan, Artur Vanetsyan was appointed the head of the National Security Service and shortly thereafter became president of the Football Federation of Armenia (he has since left both posts in a public falling out with Pashinyan’s government), while Sasun Mikaelyan, the former president of the board of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party, became head of Yerkrapah Volunteer Union and his son was elected mayor of Hrazdan.
As another episode that vividly proves this point, Pashinyan brought a half-baked government plan to parliament for a vote in February 2019. One of the MPs in the ruling My Step bloc said the following: “even if you had brought a plan that had only one sentence that said that everything is going to be great, I would have trusted you and voted in favor”, highlighting the fact that most of the parliamentarians in Pashinyan’s team are merely “yes men”.
There is also a widely held belief that elections in Armenia have been falsified, always resulting in the victory of the incumbent. However, this incumbency advantage is not something that is unique to Armenia or to the previous administration. Incumbents usually have more name recognition, financial resources, and other administrative levers that can be used for their benefit. Since 1991, the incumbent – the party that controls the executive branch – has yet to lose a major election, including in December 2018.
Again, when I point out these facts, I’m not making a value judgement about these phenomena; rather, I am pointing out that the things for which everyone was criticizing the previous administration were not problems unique to the Republican Party. Nepotism and cronyism are prevalent in political systems throughout the world and are even more visible in small, conservative societies like Armenia, parliamentarians are not always the most educated individuals or the most active legislators, and the advantage of the incumbent in an election is not a characteristic that is unique to Armenia.
In the paragraphs above, I’ve written about some of the problems that have spanned all administrations since independence. It’s important to note that there are other issues that are new or at least more pronounced now than they were a couple of years ago. The outright assault on the courts is just one example and includes Nikol Pashinyan’s call to block the entrances to all courts, the use of force to carry out the Prime Minister’s appeal, Vahe Grigoryan’s surreal attempt at seizing the presidency of the Constitutional Court, the legislatures later attempt to officially bribe judges of the highest court to resign, and finally, when all else failed, the unconstitutional decision to remove those judges by a referendum.
The current administration’s handling of foreign policy has also been unsatisfactory. In particular, the lack of a clear position on Artsakh is a cause of concern for many. On May 1, 2018, when Nikol Pashinyan was being nominated to the position of Prime Minister, he was asked an important question in parliament about his position on how to resolve the conflict. Arman Saghatelyan presented a copy of an Armenian Times, a newspaper run by the Pashinyan family, from 2001 and read excerpts from an article in which Pashinyan calls into question the strategy of holding onto the liberated territories through diplomacy. After taking the post of Prime Minister, Pashinyan stated that it was essential that the Republic of Artsakh return to the negotiating table, which was welcomed by many as an important message to the domestic and international communities. He has since made several conflicting statements, including the infamous “Artsakh is Armenia and that’s final” exclamation in Stepanakert, followed by the statement that resolution of the conflict has to satisfy the people of Armenia, Artsakh, and Azerbaijan. After a recent meeting with President of Artsakh Bako Sahakyan, Pashinyan said that Armenia and Artsakh have the same vision for the resolution of the conflict, which many criticize as being counter to the prospect of Artsakh returning to the negotiating table. A clear indication of the foreign policy failure of Pashinyan’s administration was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s latest statement that the document currently being negotiated is based on a staged approach, one that was rejected by Armenian society and served as the reason for Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s resignation in 1998.
There is also an implicit assumption that the best way to have an impact is by publicly denouncing the authorities. I assure you that there are other ways of participating in the advancement of a state and society. Just as an example, in the 2012 and 2017 parliamentary elections, I participated as an observer in varying capacities, doing my small part to help improve the electoral process. Even after the change of government, I have in no way disengaged with Armenia, because nothing has changed in terms of my relationship with the state and its citizens. The only real change is that I have decided to speak up against the policies of the new administration.
In a country like Armenia facing numerous existential threats, it is critical that we put the interests of the state above all else. This has been my philosophy over the years. When Levon Ter-Petrosyan unexpectedly re-emerged on the political scene in 2007 and tried to grab power by inciting hate and polarizing society, I stood on the side of the state against reckless encroachment. When I cautiously supported Pashinyan as an opposition figure, it was because he was on the track of building an institutional opposition that would challenge and complement the ruling party, strengthening the state rather than destroying its foundation. When I condemned the terrorist attack carried out by Sasna Tsrer, it was because the armed group killed three police officers who had dedicated their lives to the service of the state. And when Pashinyan walked from Gyumri to Yerevan in the spring of 2018 and paralyzed the state, presenting a dangerous ultimatum to Serzh Sargsyan, I tried to convince our compatriots to not join the angry mob.
Nevertheless, there is some validity in the criticism that I should have spoken up more in the past. For one thing, I certainly took for granted the stability and continuity maintained by previous governments, whose platforms were based on national conservatism. As a result, I didn’t do enough to help in the campaign to win people’s hearts and minds and combat misinformation. The real question is why I didn’t write this article three years ago or why I was so hesitant to stand up for what I believed to be right. I can try to justify my actions by making statements about the need for a viable opposition or the merits of constructive criticism. In general, holding a pro-government position demands some level of tolerance towards the opposition. But at the end of the day, these are just excuses. The fact is that we as a nation lost a major battle and I certainly have my share of blame in that defeat.
I am a firm believer that every crisis is an opportunity. And the events of April 2018 are no exception. This is a teachable moment for our people. It is a chance to learn lessons about the real challenges of governance, the dangers of populism, the imperative for being vigilant towards harmful propaganda, and the importance of a collective responsibility towards the state. If we don’t at least learn from this experience and correctly assess what is taking place, then it will all be for nothing.