Anahit Bakhshyan in the middle of clash between law enforcement and ralliers on March 1.
The apparent unraveling of the Heritage party is met with profound disappointment.
Armenia has long needed a party driven by public service and the ideal of common representation rather than by the transparent greed and hunger for power that too often characterizes law making and leadership here. Heritage has been the welcomed exception.
Heritage, since winning its seven mandates to the National Assembly in 2007, has – typical of opposition parties – had limited impact on the voting tote board inside parliament, but considerable and necessary influence on public discourse. Best of all, perhaps, the party has demonstrated rare civic servitude.
When anger boiled on Yerevan streets on March 1, 2008 and as clubs were distributed and weapons loaded, Heritage MP Anahit Bakhshyan stood staunch still with mercenary thugs in balaclava in her face and raving would-be revolutionaries at her back. Stood there, she did, a teacher in a former life, with a lesson that to serve may mean to sacrifice. It was a lesson painfully taught the future deputy on October 27, 1999, when her husband (Yuri, then Deputy Parliament Speaker) was among those shot dead in Parliament by terrorists no less angry than the crowd surrounding Anahit Bakhshyan March 1 last year.
Dwarfed by red-faced men, the Heritage deputy – one of three women representing her party in a parliament that has a total of only 12 females – stood to appeal for calm on a day that would rebuke her.
While opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan hid behind “house arrest” at his mansion on the Hrazdan Gorge, Heritage rep Bakhshyan along with colleagues Larissa Alaverdyan, Zaruhi Postanjyan, Stepan Safaryan and Armen Martirosyan made repeated appearances at the flash point of unrest near Yerevan City Hall. Martirosyan, in fact, suffered a knife wound, while trying to protect a policeman from an oppositionist sympathizer’s attack.
And while fool-hardy Ter-Petrosyan sycophant Nikol Pashinyan rallied the crowd for battle that ridiculous day, Heritage deputies represented the voice of reason – a foreshadowing of sorts of the centrist position it would edge toward.
It is a position that should not be construed as neutral – as seen when Postanjyan’s fight for the release of March 1 political prisoners was so aggressive it earned her the opportunity to be called “whore” by those who resented her acquisition of Azeri signatures on a proposal she proffered at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
In matters of civil society, of representation by the people, of intelligent debate versus hyperbolic faux patriotism, Heritage has been a beacon ...
Until now, when whatever foundation for change Heritage has laid for itself and for Armenia looks destined to crumble under in-party bickering, and the appearance of battle fatigue by its founder Raffi Hovannisian.
When, on September 7, Hovannisian’s fellow party members confirmed his resignation from parliament, it was characterized as a protest over Armenia’s foreign policy toward Turkey that, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs argues, insults the perished lives of Armenian Genocide victims, of which he is a descendent.
But if Hovannisian’s position of principle should require such a drastic denouncement of the protocols of rapprochement, what of the remaining Heritage deputies, who have maintained their mandates?
After nearly 20 years of leadership in the struggle to make Armenia democratic, Raffi Hovannisian need not be called upon to explain himself. He has earned a recess, if not retirement, from the grind of trying to do something civically meaningful against the depressing odds stacked in favor of cronyism and personal enrichment.
Still, reassurance from the Big Fella is awaited. And it is warranted.
Heritage, for many voters and sympathizers in Armenia embodied “a new word” in Armenian politics. Hovannisian may have thrust them into major-league politics solely due to his own political capital, reputation and charisma, but the seven-member Heritage faction in parliament soon became a real phenomenon due to their own hard work.
Heritage is the smallest, but undoubtedly most active faction and its work has gone well beyond the parliament corridors.
It is work that is needed, not for its politics, but for its principle.
Still.
Disappointment over the Heritage meltdown is cause to ponder:
Why is it so hard in Armenia’s political culture to build modern parties based on principles and policies that are rooted not in past divisions and disputes but instead are forward looking and focused on resolving present-day problems for the sake of a better future for the country’s children?
Who, if any, is considering what Armenia should look like tomorrow, rather than focusing on this or that historical grievance?
What happened to the sense of hope and optimism that was so prevalent immediately after the Soviet collapse? Did it all wash out in just 17 years? Armenians have faced harder obstacles and overcome them but nobody appears ready to think outside their bunker.
Some have earned the right to drop their heads. But Armenia desperately needs those who will lift their tired eyes to the horizon.
We had hoped Heritage might represent the latter.
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