CIVILITAS - The Civilitas Foundation has recently published the third of its annual reports on Armenia and the region. Let’s use this as an opportunity to look back at the Foundation’s work. What are your thoughts? V.OSKANIAN - Over nearly three years, the assessment of Civilitas’s many programs must be heard from the public. The response that we periodically receive assures us that in this short time period, the results are visible and tangible. All our programs aimed at strengthening civil society. Our public forums as well as the many programs having to do with libraries, educational scholarships, NGOs, and other institutions and movements with the potential of forging a coalesced civil society, have, together had important outcomes. These programs have enabled the more active inclusion of various segments of society. Many, even those politically passive, have begun to see value in gathering around causes, expressing opinion and participation. Our other programs, too, including those aimed at rural development, pursue the same objective. We’re in the regions with small economic development projects on the micro-financing model – helping individual families with the necessary resources to become self-reliant, which in turn leads to augmenting the capabilities of the village as a whole. Finally, this means the villager will at least feel in charge of his own life. CIVILITAS - Would you say there have been obstacles to our work? V.OSKANIAN - I would say it doesn’t matter. We have overcome whatever obstacles there have been and moved forward. There’s always a need for more resources, but I believe the greatest remaining obstacles are ideological. Tolerance for dissent is non-existent among the leadership and that breeds more intolerance among the population. The ‘with us or against us’ attitude among many in leadership positions is unhealthy. Instead of fostering intelligent, informed debate, such limitations force all sorts of comments and criticisms to the lowest level. That is why I think our public forums are important. Both live, in person, and on the web, we are saying that not only is it OK to speak up, but it is our obligation as citizens, to speak up. Perhaps we are succeeding in making that point. A recent forum had four parliamentarians, each a member of a different political party together on our stage. Prior to that, in a very heated forum on the situation in the army, we had representatives of the defense establishment, together with very vocal and active human rights activists. In other words, we are making headway and moving in the right direction. This will be a particularly productive year. If these three years were our period of growth and getting established, now, we can expand programs and work more visibly. We have great friends, in Armenia, in the Diaspora, among the international community. There are also individuals who want to feel they are part of a process that helps the country move forward. CIVILITAS - Could you talk a bit about the Annual Report process? Who contributes to it? What does Civilitas intend to say with this report? V.OSKANIAN - The report is a tool which forces us to do what we in Armenia don’t do at all. That is, to objectively assess ourselves – our actions, our intents, our successes, our failures – in order to re-group, re-define a direction if necessary and move on. At the beginning it seemed it was because Armenia was new and we didn’t know how to or didn’t have time to sit back and analyze our goals and our actions. Now, I think Armenia doesn’t want to assess. We listen as others critique, based on their own agendas or standards, and we move on regardless. The Civilitas annual report itself, as well as the process of generating the report, is the compilation of a series of opinions and arguments. The opinions are generated both within Civilitas as well as with outside experts. The compilation is the product of extensive discussion and debate and I believe that this all-inclusive process is what makes the report valuable. CIVILITAS - How do you assess, how does anyone assess? V.OSKANIAN - There’s a clear standard to assess by results. Civilitas assesses by results. I don’t know how else to do so and do so objectively. Judging by results, the situation is bad. The economy, domestic policies, foreign policy, it’s difficult and uncertain. The economy is the most palpably felt because it affects us all daily, whether secure or insecure, we all see it. And the statistics support what we sense. Poverty is up, unemployment is up, the national debt has tripled. The budget deficit has tripled. The standard of living has gone down. The 15 percent drop in GDP of 2009 was a great blow to the economy and one from which we don’t seem to know how to recover. In the best case scenario, if we double the 2.4 percent growth we saw in 2010, and we double it this year, then double it again next year, by the presidential elections of 2013, real GDP will be lower than it was in 2008. This would be a serious cause for concern, even if there were a plan for how to improve on this. But there isn’t a plan. And it’s the same with domestic politics. Freedoms are even more curtailed. Public assembly is hampered. I know that first-hand sitting here in the Civilitas office. Every kind of loud, musical event is given permission to take over the space around the opera, just so there are no public meetings held there. Television is controlled. People remain incarcerated for political reasons. The uncertainty surrounding Karabakh is palpable, there’s no negotiating document on which the sides are willing to work together. I have real concern that the right of people of NK to self-determination, which was codified in the negotiating document as a result of a long and hard effort, may just be allowed to slip away. With Turkey, the negotiating process has never, in 20 years of independence, been so tense or at such a deadlock. This is the outcome of miscalculated policies. All this together is frustrating both for Armenians and for the international community. But worse, this uncertainty presents a serious threat to our national security. The authorities on the other hand, in order not to look weak, speak and act as if all is well, which only increases our hopelessness and works against both the nation and the state. CIVILITAS - Anyone who hears this is going to ask the obvious same question now what? What can be done? Where to start? V.OSKANIAN - We know that just as the problems are many, so the causes are many. During these 20 years of independence, the problems have remained the same. They are obvious, solvable, and only by solving them can the country move forward. They are not solved only because of the absence of political will and the readiness to place personal interests above those of the country. But if I were to point to one problem, the first problem, I’d say it’s the political monopoly. It’s not the economic monopolies, it’s not corruption. These are consequences of the political monopoly. At the same time, ironically, they help sustain the political monopoly. Despite the fact that there are five parties in parliament, we have a single-party system, accountable to its own power clique only. Only when we dissolve this centralized power system, this political monopoly, only then the other issues can be tackled. Only with open political competition can there be free economic competition. Within the executive and legislative branches of government, competition must develop between distinct yet influential forces. The economic monopolies and corruption can be reined in, done away with, people can be held accountable, economic activity can be brought into the public sphere, because they won’t be accountable just to a political monopoly who will determine the rules of the game, but rather to the public, so that the public will support a multi-polar competitive political system. Only then will one pole actually, truly monitor of balance out the other pole. And only then will it be possible to struggle against corruption, economic mon opolies and other problems. That in turn means a stronger state, and more efficient use of our limited resources. According to international financial institutions, a country like Armenia should have a tax collection rate of around 22 percent, we’re actually collecting only 17 percent of GDP. The five percent difference means 193 billion Dram less in taxes, less in the state budget then we could have had. Our entire defense budget is less than that amount. That’s exactly the amount we spend on social security – imagine being able to double that. All this can be corrected if we stop pretending to be a democracy, and instead, actually embrace the values that make up democracy. Pretending to be a democracy is worse, because then people will cling to empty hopes. Democracy is not just about good elections. That’s important, but not sufficient. Democracy means embracing the best of values tolerance, liberalism, and most important rule of law. So long as we continue to head in the opposite direction—toward centralization of power, towards rule of individuals, rather than rule of law. This year, this 20th year of independence, we are all obligated to do a year-long self-assessment. To see what there is to learn from our own mistakes, to learn from our neighbors all of them, big and small, emerging or developed. The Civilitas Foundation

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