Politics
The Fourth Republic: Continuation of the past or a break? Political scientists' commentary
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced at the Civil Contract Party congress that the establishment of the Fourth Republic of Armenia is being declared a strategic task for the future.
In an interview with Radar Armenia, political scientist Ruben Mehrabyan, vice-chairman of the For the Republic party, noted that he is positive about the idea: "Because we feel that this transition is happening right now."
According to him, when all this is completed, Armenia will enter the next stage of its development. "It will build its future more reliably, but the important thing here is not to number and see something magical in them, but to accompany all this with qualitative changes," he emphasized.
In Mehrabyan's opinion, the government must be able to correctly present the meaning of the process to the broad masses of society; otherwise, it may be perceived as another judicial reform, which will lead to indifference. "This is the worst that can be expected from any political process," he emphasized, adding that some opposition forces, in particular, the "Russian 5th column," will try to hinder any initiative.
The leader of the "Democratic Alternative" party, political scientist Suren Surenyants, on the other hand, criticizes the prime minister's approach, considering it not a historical or legal justification, but a step taken for political expediency. "The numbering of republics is not a legal category. It has been applied in different countries based on historical or constitutional justifications. Nikol Pashinyan's idea of a fourth republic does not obey a historical concept," he said in an interview with Radar Armenia. According to him, the national state agenda of the 3rd Republic remained under the rubble of the 44-day war, and the issue here is not the numbering of republics.
In Surenyants' opinion, the political elite is obliged to create a more realistic national-state agenda, taking into account the consequences of the war. Still, it should not be the model proposed by Nikol Pashinyan: "Nikol Pashinyan's theses assume that the 4th Republic is not a continuation of the third, but implies a historical rupture. In other words, whatever we adopt as a national-state agenda, it should be a continuation of the 3rd Republic. Pashinyan's approach is built on the denial of the 3rd Republic."
