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Each person can be the One…. Pashinyan says.

That leader is the editor of “Haykakan Zhamanak” daily Nikol Pashinyan, who is currently one of the closest allies of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, as well as the ideological advocate of his nomination for presidency. His newspaper has turned into the first president’s microphone and in response to any criticism towards Ter-Petrosyan the paper attacks with insult and curses.

In spring, Impeachment challenged voters with it a patriotic invitation: “The country’s salvation depends on one person, and that person is you.”

The question is how honest Pashinyan was in his one man’s factor appeal to make changes in the country with participation of each citizen.

I found the answer to that question on July 7 in his editorial where he compares the Constitution of 1995 with the amended one in 2005: “The first one was good or bad but a Constitution, the second is anti-Constitution, because the first one was the state’s principal law, the second is the law of the collapse of statehood. This Constitution aims at depriving the state of the executive power. And if Articles 1 and 2 weren’t irreplaceable, we would be facing an altogether different situation now”.

Pashinyan, most probably, means that the amendments envisage Yerevan to have a representative body, executive power, and the communities are granted some freedom.

To cut it short, this is a protection of a pyramid-shaped, vertical system with entire power centered in the hands of one person sitting on top of that pyramid (once called a king, then the secretary general, and now a president); a system that contradicts democratic principles, where decisions are made and implemented by one body.

Decentralization of government is one of the textbook principles of democracy.

Pashinyan’s viewpoint that the country’s being democratic is defined by the Article 2 of the Constitution, which says: “In the Republic of Armenia the power belongs to the people”, is an illusion, as one can come across such an article even in the most dictatorial countries. The Soviet constitution also ruled that the power belonged to the people, but the Article 6 gave that power to the Communist Party. The Constitution of 1995 made it clear that power belongs not to the people, but to one person, that is the President. He is the one appointing prosecutors, judges of all instances, ministers, the Prime Minister, who in his turn appoints governors of provinces, etc. He [the president] is in power to also dissolve the National Assembly.

The pyramid-shaped system started forming in 1991 after the presidential elections, but its actual establishment took place in 1995. Before 95 a representative of opposition had a chance to be elected to a local administration body: like, for example, in 1991 Dashnak Hovhannes Suqiasyan became the mayor of Ashtarak (the head of the executive committee), however the already forming pyramid could not tolerate a strange body in its administration, and he was killed in 1992. Only after the change of power the crime was disclosed and, eight years later, convictions handed down.

Although the amendments made in 2005 democratized the Constitution to some extent, the one man power was slightly split, powers were somewhat divided between the president and the parliament, it’s hard to guess now how those changes will work, especially that the recent parliamentary elections were held according to the old Constitution scenario, and the election system has remained vertical. Of course the pyramid is advantageous for the one on its top, and these reforms were not an expression of the authorities will, but a result of the pressure on the part of the Council of Europe.

But this split of power occurred only on the top of the pyramid, faintly spread over to some areas, only Yerevan was lucky. With cosmetic changes in the sphere of local administration- it’s not in the government’s power to dismiss the elected head of community by governor’s mediation, as it used to be, but it can be done based on the decision of the Constitutional Court. Nonetheless, local administration bodies did not gain freedom, and depend on appointed province governors.

As political analyst Yervand Bozoyan says, more fundamental amendments to the Constitution are required for true democracy, first of all provinces need to become self-governing, have representational bodies, a budget, and their governors should be elected by people, i.e. there have to be more of executive bodies.

“11 provinces are 11 totalitarian areas, and the appointed governor, being the carrier of the government allocated money to the province and the “zone watcher” and can treat the head of the community how his heart wishes.”

Consequently, not all who want can be elected a head of community and “perform executive power” without the authorities’ approval. They all are either from pro-government political parties or those having a government “roof”.

The constitution of 1995 monopolizing all the power (executive, legislative, judicial, local administration) brought about monopoly in other spheres as well- economy, religion, media, culture, and the principal trigger of development- competition- disappeared. And in these circumstances, when public movement cannot have any part in decision making, it turns into authority: projection of the constitution, and NGOs into a mini-model of the state with similar centralized system, that can do only one thing- earn money by grant projects under the pretence of public activities.

So, the Constitution of 1995 created a whole vertical anti-democratic system, the engineer of which is Levon Ter-Petrosyan. As the country belonged to one person, and not to the people, hence another single person would be able to take it from him, that’s exactly what happened as a result of power turnover in 1998.

Of course people have a quality of changing, and one can suppose that Ter-Petrosyan has reconsidered his views about the state structure. However, in his speech he did not criticize the system he had created and talked only about the achievements of his regime. And his ideological speakerphone “Haykakan Zhamanak” with its propaganda of the 1995 Constitution, shows that the former team not only hasn’t undergone any ideological changes, but is even proud and defends the anti-democratic system it had created.

Impeachment was like a stretching exercise before Ter-Petrosyan’s run for presidency, whose only plan is in replacing people – Serzh Sargsyan and Kocharyan with Ter-Petrosyan, rather than an ideological struggle. And if a person should be replaced by another person, what difference does it make to a regular resident who is in charge of appointing mayors, or whether the unfair court verdict is carried out by Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s or Kocharyan’s or Sargsyan’s order?