Compulsory pension democracy

The recent bill on compulsory pension fund creation launched political processes which highlight the fact that Armenia’s governance is poor and the government is anti-democratic. President Serzh Sargsyan openly announced that 80 per cent of the society is against this proposal, and that the government is minority.

Prime-Minister Tigran Sargsyan says the government accepts the discontent of the society but “makes the society” change the thinking as this is a reform that will build “a responsible citizen of the society.” Normally democracy would mean consideration of the opinion of the society’s majority. In fact the government openly states that they are minority in this issue but they obligate their wish. Theories of democracy also say that governments can do such thing and make changes in spite of the wish of the society only in case when the same government has been elected by the society’s majority and is legitimate. Armenia’s government has everything but legitimacy.

The government is formed at all levels through making the wish of the minority the duty of the majority, and after this happens the minority makes the majority do what they want. This is a classic example of a non-legitimate government, an example of poor democracy, which we see in Armenia now. However, the strange fact is that this is being done through the participation of people who are designated by the West to deal with relations with Armenia. For example, during a recent conference on compulsory pension fund the World Bank Armenia country director Jean-Michel Happi, the IMF Armenian country director Teresa Daban Sanchez, and the US Ambassador to Armenia John Heffern praised this initiative that 80 per cent of the society does not want.

The Armenian government and groups that tend to join the Customs Union would always dream of such statements on the part of Western institution representatives. In fact, the Western powers that legitimized the government formed as a result of March 1, and the same powers that again legitimized the same government in 2013, now are supporting the same system, which they believe is also good that is targeted by the society for improvement. They also claim that the activists who are struggling against this system are important factors of democracy in Armenia. This itself is very interesting in the context of what is happening in Ukraine now.