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September 24, 2004 National Citizens’ Initiative Assesses 13 Years of Armenian Independence Yerevan—The National Citizens’ Initiative (NCI) today convened a specialized policy roundtable on “The 13 Years of Armenia’s Independence: Have We Really Learned to be Independent?” On the occasion of the thirteenth anniversary of the Republic’s independence, the meeting brought together policy makers, public figures, academic circles, and representatives of the mass media and NGO communities to highlight Armenia’s sovereign track record and the challenges of transitional democracy, to reassess the bitter and sweet of the independence era, and to analyze whether the nation has drawn relevant lessons from the past on the road to true independence.
Hovsep Khurshudian, diaspora and economic affairs analyst of the Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS), greeted the audience with opening remarks. “Independence is the greatest value, without which it is impossible to view a country’s future. However, the country should be run so that independence really serves the people’s well-being, is fully grasped and valued by the mainstream, and becomes a source of their pride,” Khurshudian said. “From Whom Must the Fatherland be Saved?” was the topical focus of Artsrun Pepanian, a leading analyst for AR television, and based on his book of the same title. Against the background of Armenia’s historical experience he presented an analytical model to explain the current situation in Armenia. According to it, “the factors of the national and the transitional phase” are two circumstances that have had a negative impact on societal processes. The adverse manifestations of the Armenian people’s demeanor as circumscribed by its very history, on the one hand, and the complications and vices brought about by the change of regime, on the other, continue to impede Armenia’s state-building efforts and the regulation of its public life. “The English tragedy was repeated in Armenia: a minority endowed with authority over society came to possess the domain of public property, whereas the traditionally obedient majority was unable to withstand those wild elements,” he maintained, claiming that widespread public disappointment, if allowed to continue, might arouse mass frustration. In this case, Pepanian concluded, the strata of society will gradually stop bearing new ideas.
Law professor Hrair Tovmasian of the Heritage Party detailed “The
Legal Heritage of Contemporary Armenia and the Challenge of Nation Building.”
Owing to a near-permanent absence of statehood, the Armenian people never
found itself at the source of legal values, and thus could not become
the real carrier of such values. “The legal basis for the country’s
governance was always imposed on us from outside, because we have always
lacked the potential for creating legal thought, both centuries ago and
currently,” he said. In the legal instruments imported from foreign
sources, as a rule all individual rights and liberties except for religious
freedoms were brought to a bare minimum. As a result, Tovmasian asserted,
the Armenian individual has had to bypass the law, which in the course
of centuries has led behaviorally to legal nihilism. The remainder of the session was devoted to exchanges of views and policy recommendations among the public figures and policy specialists in attendance. Noteworthy were interventions by MP Grigor Haroutiunian of the People’s Party of Armenia; Vigen Khachatrian of the Liberal Democratic Party; Vardan Khachatrian, theology professor at Yerevan State University; former minister of state Hrach Hakobian; Alexander Butaev and Albert Baghdasarian of the National Democratic Union; Aramazd Zakarian of the Republic Party; Edward Antinian of the Liberal Progressive Party; Petros Makeyan of the Democratic Fatherland Party; Shant Haroutiunian of Armenia’s Tseghakron Party; Tamar Gevorgian of the United Labor Party; and many others.
The participants attached particular importance to the formation of a dignified and law-based civil society, the creation of favorable conditions for the harmonious development of the “independence generation,” the overcoming of consequences of the clan system and Soviet remains, and by all means the consolidation of national-state foundations and enhancement of the people’s welfare.
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