More than a hundred guests were present at the public discussion on “Vulgarity vs. Political Debate”, organised by the Civilitas Foundation on July 7, 2009. The speakers were Artsvik Minasyan, member of the ARF faction of the National Assembly, Hranush Kharatyan, a noted ethnographer and public commentator, and Naira Melkumyan, former foreign minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and founder of the “Aybengir” publishing house.

Opening the discussion, Civilitas Foundation director Salpi Ghazarian spoke on how the absence of a culture of political debate within Armenia forces us to seek platforms elsewhere. Thus when we do not have the means to defend our rights in Armenian courts, we are compelled to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, or if there is no possibility of debate in Armenia’s parliament, the issue moves to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

According to Hranush Kharatyan, there are two reasons for the absence of debate when it comes to the most serious issues. First, the Armenian authorities have until now enforced a culture which dictates, “There is no debate in Armenia. There is instead the simple means of presenting oneself as correct and defaming all others. Secondly, it is very easy to label someone as a traitor instead of sitting down, discussing, thinking, coming up with solutions, that is to say, instead of analysis and drawing conclusions”.

Hranush Kharatyan also stated, “Instead they remember the many incidents when they slandered each other. And society hears how, ‘this one is such a horrible man’, ‘that one is such a rascal’, ‘that person is a crook’, etc., which probably contains some truth, in reality. But this is not what is meant by discussion. And the phenomenon of political debate is surprisingly completely absent in the media. Until our most influential political forces, or those who claim to be such, don’t analyse the views of their opponents themselves, or, by analysing their views, they do not present their own, we will not have such a real culture of debate”.

“In Armenia, the word ‘tolerance’ means ‘obedience’. The authorities have, in reality, their subjects and one expects obedience from subjects, which they refer to as ‘tolerance’, whereas the word ‘tolerance’, in broad terms, consists of deep philosophy, which, first of all, implies that someone more open-minded and with greater capacity must discuss the issue with tolerance, and if he is mistaken, he must try to acknowledge the error and reconstruct his approach. Such a phenomenon is practically completely absent in our society”, Hranush Kharatyan said.

The deputy of the ARF faction of the National Assembly Artsvik Minasyan stated that, unfortunately, the parliament has not become the place where essential political discussions are held.

“We have something else instead: discussions on the streets (and by ‘streets’ here I mean outside of the parliament and not discussions of the organized civil society). And it seems that anything said, any such opinion becomes, unfortunately, widely acknowledged in society,” the parliamentarian said.

He also stated that he wouldn’t have approached Azerbaijani or Turkish representatives himself, but this does not mean that what has been going on with regards to Zaruhi Postanjyan was just.

“If we have a delegation which represents Armenia and which is headed by a representative of the ruling party, I believe that the head of delegation has to chiefly bear the responsibility, a responsibility by which he ought to have been able, first of all, to reconcile those disagreements. And if he wasn’t able to do so, then only could he have taken other steps, and not immediately condemn an act, with regards to the details of which many members of the delegation, in their own words, ‘did not have a problem’. I myself have a problem with those details. But if they did not have such a problem, then an astonishing question presents itself: why did you all not sign? Had they been among the five co-signatories, this person would not have to go to the Turks or Azerbaijanis”, Artsvik Minasyan said.

The former NKR foreign minister Naira Melkumyan said, “The campaign which has started against Zaruhi Postanjyan is going to have very negative consequences in foreign policy, because those European bodies with which we co-operate, from which we expect something or other, will be well aware of the consequences of her initiative. No one is going to be interested in why that was the case. The result will be that such treatment is awaiting to maverick women politicians in Armenia, and that will soon become a foreign policy issue for Armenia”.

Naira Melkumyan also thinks that many active women do not enter politics in Armenia, “because they are afraid of such intolerance”.

Human rights advocate Avetik Ishkhanyan agreed, that when insults are hurled instead of holding political debates, as in the case of Zaruhi Postanjyan, then the question must be resolved through the courts.

“But let us keep one thing in mind. Ultimately, if we tried to solve this issue through judicial authority, then the Sword of Damocles would hang above the opposition, because no figure in power would testify in court. This is the very problem. It is a vicious circle, whose solution (as I have always said) is to create an independent judiciary. All surveys we have held have shown a 2% trust in court decisions. We need to have at least 50% confidence so that any court decision, with regards to any person, would not be perceived as having been dictated from the authorities, or as a limitation of the freedom of speech of the opposition,” the human rights advocate said.

According to Avetik Ishkhanyan, no real debates have taken place in Armenia since 1995. Instead, there have only been “mutual insults”. This was the case during the Soviet times, when, for example, any academic disagreement between scholars would be rendered personal enmities, leading to clashes among different factions, even to the point of losing one’s job and getting persecuted. “That political counter-culture has manifested itself in such ways that a constructive opposition would be viewed around here as simply that opposition which speaks without insults. And the real opposition is considered only to be that which makes its declarations in a coarse, insulting manner,” the activist said.

To add to this, Aghavni Karakhanyan, director of the Institute for Civil Society and Regional Development, stated that political culture is primarily formed by regular people, based on their conduct.

“We form part of that system. And what sort of conduct are we displaying in these circumstances, as individuals, as politicians, as representatives of NGOs? I believe that the fault lies not with the state, not with an organisation, but with us, with each of us. While saying those words, did we think about whether we could respond when asked why we said so? I do not see in our society that any person can bear the responsibility for what he or she says,” Aghavni Karakhanyan remarked.

Another participant in the discussion, member of the ARF faction of the National Assembly Lilit Galstyan, stated that when it comes to the involvement of women in politics, among 125 parliaments in the world, Armenia ranks 106th,  next to developing countries in Africa.

She believes that what happened with regards to Zaruhi Postanjyan shows that, “the issues and their causes run much deeper. Most unfortunately, the sort of political culture that we have seems to exclude healthy debate, and we find ourselves in an environment of extremes”.

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