The April 2 parliamentary elections passed without blatant violations and incidents of violence, but in an atmosphere of despair. 

In the opinion of human rights advocate, head of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office Artur Sakunts, that atmosphere is not only worrying, but also demands alarm. According to him, the fundamental principle of human existence is at stake, dignity, that minimum threshold of human nature, which you can’t go below. When you remove the backbone from the body, man becomes an amorphous material, and you can no longer expect dignified behavior from people in that condition.

There’s the impression that a state of depression has emerged after the elections. Is this impression justified?

We saw materialized during voting what we had been talking about for a long time: impunity, irresponsibility, corruption, and injustice. We have even warned that this situation can have a very dangerous impact at the level of vitality. 

We didn’t have great expectations in terms of changes, but we still hoped that man (though poor, though unfree, though frightened) would make a decision and would indeed make a dignified choice.

Ultimately, man is the determinant. But when you see how great the influence of the atmosphere has become, you understand that the entire process of choice can be likened to choice at a penitentiary. 

Why?

The problem is that behavior is unanimous and uniform. At the voting booth no one held anyone’s hand and told them how to vote. But man, being unfree and, most importantly, psychologically subjected, votes as though he was guided.

He votes, feeling himself helpless before a system that is unjust and free from punishment. This state of submission is actually terrible. 

And this has become a problem of anthropology, even of civilization, since the system has managed to contaminate a person. There has always been at least a rebellion, but there isn’t that now. 

A system that wants to maintain its power, as a rule, encountering resistance, is forced to resort to violence and force, but what’s worrying now is the absence of that resistance.

Is this the result of fear?

Usually, you’re afraid of losing something (yourself, for instance). But now we see that people don’t have that fear; they don’t even think that they have something to lose.

Ultimately, the political parties and forces know very well what the situation is. All the forces deal with the same electorate. And I ask them: what did you do for your voter not to be of this quality?

After all, an additional concern is deserving and taking ownership of parliamentary mandates in this environment and in this situation. It can be called pillage. Yes, they go over corpses [the booty] and get some privileges at the expense of these corpses.

And in this situation, voters don’t have the chance to choose. No political group presents itself as a uniting force, and it makes the voter into its image.

In your opinion, hasn’t the media, with its messages, contributed to this apathy? 

Yes and no. The media can’t synthesize speech; with its texts, it presents the speech that already exists in society.

I’m talking about all types of media: both television and online media, where a very small percentage of pieces express ideas. 

The media presents the objective reality, but our reality has already changed and been distorted so much, that we can’t expect much from the media. If the possessor is a disease, then healthy, reasonable, and dignified speech appears in a small segment. And the media appears with a similar small segment.

The media cannot artificially increase the volume of reasonable speech and allocate it more space than it actually has. 

But on the other hand, there’s also the question of responsibility. We still don’t have a criterion in the public information arena. We are all to blame that the public didn’t give importance to the Public Television of Armenia and didn’t view it as an entity that shapes criteria in the information arena. 

Public television, first of all, in terms of origin, must be public, since it exists at the expense of our taxes and has the largest audience. In many places, people watch only that channel. And that gap can’t be filled by the rest of the hundreds of media entities; all such attempts will be just minor initiatives, insignificant steps. 

The primary factor for any authoritarian system are information sources. In Russia too, the authoritarian state began from managing several key Russian channels.

In the matter of criteria, we’ve been losing constantly. It would be better if Public TV remained state [television]; that way at least the notion of “public” wouldn’t be distorted.

The style that is created at Public TV begins to be continued and circulated in other media. It’s media by name, but in reality, it’s a means of propaganda. [Joseph] Goebbels said that if you [tell a lie big enough and] keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

These elections revealed that. Inspiring speeches during the election campaign period were unable to compensate and eliminate long-time propaganda. We saw that there was a ‘pseudo-diversity’ of opinions, which was expressed only through numbers. In terms of content it was empty. 

All the same, we don’t see civil society representatives on public television. And the problem is we don’t consider that a restriction of speech.

But in reality, public television should’ve been the guarantor of freedom of speech, since it exists at the expense of public resources. 

The numerical results of this voting proved how great of an influence not only the restriction of freedom of speech, but also the distortion of the content of speech and one-sided propagandizing (that is, for some purposes) has had. 

Generally, through the voting we noted the result of the prolonged effect of some serious systemic problems. We’ve come to a point where everything (economy, culture, education, politics) fits within the logic of a one-party system. 

It seems we spoke more about anthropological rather than post-election problems.

At this point, it’s not even interesting the percentage of violations at different polling stations, to what extent freedom of speech was restricted, or what international observers will say in their reports. We’ve passed that stage. Yes, there has been an organized and massive abuse of administrative resources. 

But I don’t want to record the effect of electoral bribes on voting results; I want to understand why an electoral bribe should have an effect.

The reasons for electoral bribes are more worrying than the fact itself. Facts are just something found on the surface, but the reasons that led to this situation are much deeper. 

Well then how are we going to live? In the case of episodic complaints, the succession of steps can be understood, but this is no longer one person’s complaint. This is a question of human nature, which is directly related to man’s backbone. Imagine that you remove this backbone from man. Man in this case becomes some amorphous creature. 

Even if a lot of people don’t like what I’m saying, all the same, it must be expressed. And a question arises: where must it be expressed? In the kitchen, in closed rooms, on Public TV…?

For me, the most terrifying thing is the ability to take advantage of the degradation of civilization today. How can political groups avail of the fruits of this degradation? This is probably a phenomenon akin to suicide.

It’s a trivial expression, but it’s true that hope dies last. We really need to look for exit options.

Only a few people in the same situation can feel free and dignified inside. And it is they who are able to keep the human standard. That is, to be free in unfree conditions.

Of course, they can be eliminated, but their not-material standard (dignity) will remain. 

Man naturally strives for freedom, but it’s distorted here [in Armenia] and does not lead to rebellion.

It seems as though what’s happening is a loss of energy, beginning from the rebellion of Electric Yerevan.

A loss of energy happened when talk turned to not politicizing the Electric Yerevan demonstrations. That was the loss. 

A similar thing happened during this election campaign, when a citizen, addressing Gagik Tsarukyan, began to criticize Serzh Sargsyan, and Tsarukyan replied, let’s not politicize [it].

This is actually a unique response, which is aimed at wasting energy.

Interview by Nune Hakhverdyan