"FOREIGNERS WILL HELP US"

Armenia is witnessing another surge in domestic activity. President Serzh Sargsyan has started "reformatting" the ruling coalition, which will now also include the Dashnaks. The ceremony of signing the agreement on cooperation between the ruling Republican Party and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation - Dashnaktsutyun, which was in opposition until recently, was held with all the solemnity that is required in such cases - at the residence of the Armenian president. From the Republican Party of Armenia, the agreement was signed by Deputy Chairman Armen Ashotyan and from the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun - by the representative of the ARF Supreme Body in Armenia, Agvan Vardanyan. Soon it became known that the Dashnaks, according to the document, got the posts of two new governors - Aragatsotn and Shirak regions of Armenia. The ARFD also got three ministerial positions: specifically, the Ministry of Economy is headed by Artsvik Minasyan, the Ministry of Territorial Administration - David Lokyan, and the Ministry of Education and Science - Levon Mkrtchyan.

In addition, according to a presidential decree, the Ministry of Finance was restructured - the State Revenue Committee, which is now headed by the chief of the Presidential Control Service, Hovik Hovsepyan, was separated from it. Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Yervand Zakharyan was replaced by Deputy Chairman of the Control Chamber Levon Yolyan. Earlier, Deputy Prosecutor General Georgiy Kutoyan was appointed director of the National Security Council and Deputy Justice Minister Arman Tatoyan was elected ombudsman of Armenia.

However, Yerevan opposition analysts believe that these events are unlikely to be followed by real political changes. In particular, the deputy chairman of the Heritage party, Armen Martirosyan, spoke very pointedly about the new changes in the Armenian government: "No matter what colour the Soviet Zhiguli is painted, it will not become a Mercedes. All these reshuffles are convenient configurations in the run-up to the parliamentary elections in 2017. All this is aimed at reproducing the regime headed by Serzh Sargsyan."

Assumptions have already been leaked into the press that in fact the invitation of the Dashnaks to the government is a clear attempt to weaken the political position of the ex-president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan. During his stay in office, the ARFD played the role of the ruling party, although formally, Kocharyan was not its member. And if Sargsyan is trying to win over the Dashnaks, that says a lot. There are a number of calculations and forecasts, the authors of which believe that the most dangerous rival for Serzh Sargsyan is not Ter-Petrosyan, Raffi Hovannisyan or Zaruhi Postanjyan, but precisely Kocharyan.

Analysts cite a lot of arguments offhand in favour of such an assumption. Robert Kocharyan is an experienced and clever politician, he is from the same "Karabakh clan" as Serzh Sargsyan, and can easily win over precisely the heavy figures the incumbent head of state counts on. But the main trump card of Robert Kocharyan is his connections in Moscow. And if in the midst of the "Hayrapetyan case", it seemed that the star of Kocharyan has fallen on the Moscow horizon, now that Levon Hayrapetyan has moved out of the remand centre and been placed under house arrest and the Russian law enforcement agencies are not so interested in other members of the leadership of his business empire Sistema, supporters of Robert Kocharyan sighed with relief.

In any case, in specific Yerevan conditions, we are talking not only or rather not so much about the connections of Kocharyan (or Sargsyan) in Moscow. The exaggerated attitude of the Armenian political establishment to the immortal "Foreigners will help us" is much more important. And we should dwell on this in more detail.

It is clearly not in vain that documentary writer Eric Feigl, author of the book "The Truth About Terror: Armenian terrorism - the origins and causes", underlined "the fatal temptation experienced not only by the Armenians of Cilicia, but by all Armenians to voluntarily engage in games of big-time politics". Even at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, ahead of the First World War, activists of the Hnchak party actively built bridges with London while the Dashnaks looked for defenders in Russia, forgetting about the series of political assassinations they carried out on the streets of Russian cities ... According to the official version, the aim of all these "games" was the creation of "Western Armenia" in Turkish eastern Anatolia. In fact, political hustlers just did their business.

The results of that policy for the Armenians, as we know, turned out to be disastrous. And then experts will remember many times how Shahan Natalie, the future head of the Armenian terrorist organization Nemesis, which attacked members of the government of the Young Turks and government officials of independent Azerbaijan in the 1920s, summarized the sad outcome of those political games: "The Russians betrayed us. The British betrayed us. The French retook Cilicia with our weapons and our blood and abandoned us disarmed in front of the Turkish yataghan. The Italians armed the Turks to expel the Greeks from Izmir and burned us with the whole city. The Americans lulled us with sweet words and exchanged us for several wells with oil." The famous Norwegian polar explorer, Nobel Peace Prize winner Fridtjof Nansen, who launched a very active campaign of assistance to Armenian refugees in the early 20th century, said: "Woe betide the Armenian people drawn into European politics! For them it would be better if not a single European diplomat remembered their name."

A century has passed since then, but the Armenian establishment seems to be ready to repeat the same mistake. In any case, the local political spectrum is clearly divided into "pro-Russian" and "pro-Western" political forces. Tragically, those who are in favour of Armenia's membership in the EAEU, mainly forces in power, are in full confidence that Russia must try to "keep" its political allies in power. This means that all conceivable problems of these allies must be decided by Moscow, and at its own expense: to patch, for example, holes gaping in the Armenian budget (and no matter that Moscow has enough of its own problems in the economy), "close the debt" of Armenian power grids, reduce gas prices at the first whim of Yerevan, etc. In turn, Yerevan "Westerners" seem to perceive "point-black" the talk about those "orange technologies" and "uncles in pith helmets", who organize "colour revolutions" in countries of the former USSR and bring their henchmen to power. And they believe that once they demonstrate their commitment to "the European choice" or even anything of the sort in a more convincing way, the coveted "uncles in pith helmets" will immediately appear and share ingenious "orange technologies" with their allies, and power itself, together with corruption schemes, will fall into their hands like an overripe fruit.

A fair amount of food for thought here is given by the events of 1 March 2016, when two events coincided on the Armenian political stage: the visit to Yerevan by the head of European diplomacy, Federica Mogherini, and the eighth anniversary of the shooting of those protesting against the rigged results of the presidential elections on the streets of Yerevan. Recall: After a peaceful protest rally that lasted many days, the police first cleared Theatre Square on 1 March 2008 and then hastily transferred army commandos from Karabakh who opened fire "to kill" the participants in a new protest. Eight protesters and two policemen were killed and dozens were injured. An investigation was initiated, but today it is, in fact, frozen.

And it just so happened that by the arrival of Federica Mogherini in Yerevan, the local opposition held a spectacular "review of forces". Six opposition groups held a march along the central streets of Yerevan in memory of the 1 March victims and laid flowers at the monument to Myasnikyan, where major events occurred eight years ago. The opposition claims in a statement that "after eight years, in spite of the successive demands of Armenian society and international organizations, no one has been brought to justice and punished for these crimes". According to them, the falsification of the constitutional referendum of 2015 and subsequent pressure on the protesters proved that the authorities continue to act according to the logic of the 1 March events. During the rally, opposition leaders spoke out in favour of announcing 1 March a day of remembrance for the victims of state terror. And they called on the European Union and the European Parliament to impose sanctions against the current Armenian leadership.

And then Federica Mogherini arrived in the capital of Armenia. For obvious reasons, it is difficult to say anything about the details of the meetings with Armenian officials behind closed doors, but the statements of the head of European diplomacy "for the public" did not contain anything that could be interpreted as support for one against others in the political field of Armenia. Things reached such a point that the expert of the Caucasus Institute, Hrant Mikaelyan, openly told EADaily: "We regularly hear some calls, advice and recommendations from the EU delegation head, but I do not think that there will be direct interference in local processes. I suppose that since Armenia's accession to the EAEU, the European Union has somewhat less interest in Armenia in this respect."

And we can only guess what tricks Armenian "Westerners" will go for in order to revive this interest.