Armenia shows democratic reform can triumph: David Ignatius

Armenia shows democratic reform can triumph: David Ignatius

PanARMENIAN.Net - If you’re looking for some good news from a faraway land, here’s a tale of Armenia’s “velvet revolution”, which just deposed a corrupt, authoritarian government and installed a team of eager young reformers to govern a tiny nation perilously bordering Russia, journalist and novelist David Ignatius says in an article published on The Washington Post.

The article continues: "Maybe it’s the start of a counter-trend, in a world where so many indicators of freedom and good governance have been pointing downward. But it must be said: Time is not on the revolutionaries’ side. The squeeze on Armenia, from its neighbors and domestic power brokers, could undo the gains of the bottom-up protest movement that toppled the long-entrenched, pro-Moscow government of Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan."

"For now, there’s something of a festival atmosphere here, as Armenians enjoy the aftermath of what the new prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, described to me as a “revolution of love and solidarity.” Bands play in the streets, people spontaneously cheer Pashinyan in public, and the post-Soviet haze seems, for now, to have cleared," Ignatius says.

"Pashinyan spoke with me for an hour last Friday at his grand office on Republic Square, in the center of the capital. He looked slightly uncomfortable in a dark business suit. The popular image of him is of a guy in a baseball cap who led a march on the capital that grew so large it paralyzed the government. Barricading the streets were jazz musicians atop a piano, a chamber quartet and a young boy halting traffic with a line of toy trucks.

"The miracle of this revolution is that it happened at all. Russia had long supported Sargsyan and his oligarch cronies. But in May, after Sargsyan’s fall, the Kremlin didn’t block Pashinyan’s accession to prime minister. That’s partly because Pashinyan declared, as he told me, that his movement had “no geopolitical agenda.”

"What’s next for the velvet revolution? Pashinyan outlined his program, but it was long on democratic idealism and thin on specifics.

"His first priority is to stop the corruption that has been leaching away the creative and entrepreneurial spirit for which Armenians are often known. “Unfortunately, Armenia was a very corrupt country in the last 25 years,” Pashinyan told me, with cronies close to the leadership taking what amounted to a private tax on the economy. “People were fed up with that situation,” he said.

""Linked to Pashinyan’s anti-graft campaign is a commitment to break up the monopolies that dominate key sectors of the economy. Armen Grigoryan, the new national security adviser, worked previously for Transparency International, an anti-corruption group. He explained in an interview that the Armenian economy could grow if the new government could shed more light on its operations and “decrease interaction between the state and the citizen.”

The new government will need to put teeth into this anti-corruption push by holding some of the bribe-takers accountable. “I’m not going to give orders to judges,” Pashinyan insisted, but he warned: “We will try to identify and bring to responsibility the most corrupt people.” To combat monopolies, he’ll need to capitalize new, smaller companies, perhaps through a national investment bank.

"Breaking free of the gravitational field of the past will take all of Pashinyan’s idealism and energy — and also some raw political power. He told me that it’s “very likely” he’ll hold a snap election for a new parliament by October or November, well before the April deadline. And the courts are already releasing some prominent political prisoners.

"Armenia is a subject on which I’m hardly neutral, as my father’s family has Armenian roots. During my visit here, I helped host the Aurora humanitarian awards, created by a group of prominent Armenians to honor human rights champions from other countries. Armenia has experienced more than its share of bad news, historically and in the recent, post-Soviet past. So it was encouraging to see Yerevan as a city of smiles after its dramatic moment of change."

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