Prominent Members of the Republican Party Forget an Extremely Important Fact - Arthur Sakunts

Human rights defender Arthur Sakunts wrote on his Facebook page: "Considering the various comments and assessments often made with the deliberate intention of creating confusion, I find it necessary to state: The 2015 Constitution and the laws adopted based on it have been imposed on Armenia in line with the logic of securing Serzh Sargsyan's personal and the Republican Party - Dashnaktsutyun coalition's power. This included the formation of state bodies, including the appointment of specific individuals, under the guise of selection or involvement in the entire process of their completion. Essentially, once again, through the parliamentary governance model, the constitutional framework legitimized the already established usurpation of the state by a clan, attempting to give it the appearance of legality. This was similar to what occurred in post-Soviet Belarus, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Central Asian countries. Many have spoken about this in the past.

After the Velvet Revolution of 2018, which removed Serzh Sargsyan and the Republican - Dashnaktsutyun coalition from power, the state bodies that had been formed and the norms regulating their activities remained as a heavy legacy. The prominent members of the Republican Party often claim that they left behind effective functioning state institutions, forgetting one small yet extremely important detail: yes, you left them, but they are only useful for ensuring the usurpation of the state by Serzh Sargsyan's personal and your group interests, and not for exercising power by the citizens of Armenia. Therefore, such claims that you left behind effective functioning institutions either indicate that you still do not understand what happened in April 2018, and therefore continue to perceive power solely as a service to group interests, which aligns completely with your views, or you harbor an unapologetic hope that the new authorities will be exactly like yours, thus gaining serious grounds for stating that nothing can change in Armenia.

To summarize, the Constitution and tools created by Serzh Sargsyan and the Republican - Dashnaktsutyun coalition, as well as the bodies formed during their rule, are absolutely unsuitable for the formation of a state based on democratic principles and the rule of law. They could not be suitable from the outset, as they were created for the purpose of usurping the state and ensuring clannish governance led by one person.

Now, regarding the second part of the question: is it possible for a constitution and tools created for authoritarian governance to be suitable for restoring a sovereign state operating on the principles of popular power, democracy, and the rule of law? The answer to this question is indisputable: no, it cannot be.

It would make perfect sense to change the state's governance tools - the constitution, the legal regulations of state institution formation according to the demands and principles of a state operating on democratic and rule of law principles, and then switch to their new content and new principle formation. Otherwise, the formation of state bodies according to the approaches of a state operating on democratic and rule of law principles will inevitably face serious problems, obstacles, and deadlock situations, conditioned by the nature of previous regulations. Instead of wasting unproductive energy, time, and resources on various interpretations to overcome the nonsensical and uncomfortable situations arising from the inappropriateness of the aforementioned regulations to the needs of a state operating on democratic and rule of law principles, one should change the causes of these obstacles. This will ensure the legitimacy of all actions and make every decision's legitimacy indisputable and unassailable.

On the other hand, it will deprive supporters of authoritarian governance or various opposition figures from grounds for formal, verbal criticisms of the improperly implemented regulations they created against the new, democratic authorities. Yes, it is extremely important to strive for and exert efforts directed toward the substantive and profound restoration of a state operating on principles of democracy and the rule of law, but the actions undertaken towards that goal must also be exclusively legitimate, which would be guaranteed by abandoning and discarding the former, unfit tools, and establishing new legitimate tools, and implementing actions aimed at those new tools' changes.

Indeed, creating such tools also requires effort and energy, which represents the institutionalization of the revolution itself. Without tools, legal norms, and constitutions that meet the needs of a state of democratic principles and the rule of law, institutional guarantees cannot be created. Legitimacy is not granted or given indefinitely to anyone, in any state; it requires constant maintenance by legitimate actions through the continuous formation of legitimate tools and actions based on them."