Saturday, March 14, 2009

IN SEARCH OF A CIVIL SOCIETY – BUT NOT THE ONE WE HAVE

The Civilitas Foundation put out their report of 2008- about 10 of 60 pages of which are devoted to the significant domestic issues surrounding the presidential elections. Well, there is a lot to say about those 10 pages, and their purported objectivity and "unique Armenian perspective." Below is the start of some thoughts about the document...

IN SEARCH OF A CIVIL SOCIETY – BUT NOT THE ONE WE HAVE

Isn’t it just wonderful that Vartan Oskanyan, who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs under Robert Kocharyan for ten years, is so motivated to create a civil society in Armenia? Who could have had better training? Kocharyan must have been a paragon of democratic instincts, despite the fact that he could not understand why an opposition should exist, let alone function.

Soon after leaving office in March 2008, Oskanyan initiated Civilitas to promote democracy, but especially civil society, which apparently did not yet exist in Armenia. Maybe then it is a very specific civil society that he is promoting, he and whoever is, in substance, supporting Civilitas offices (the poshest of any NGO in Armenia) and personnel. Ten years of unqualified service should be worth something, for sure. But is that all there is to the story? Maybe there are some answers to be found in the most recent report by Civilitas, “Armenia in 2008.”

In its introduction, the Report acknowledges that there are a number of international organizations that produce accountings of major events and issues of relevance to Armenia. This one, it promises, will be distinct from the others for its “Armenian” perspective. I guess organizations such as the Helsinki Citizens Assembly Vanadzor for one, which continues to produce reports on ongoing events in Armenia, are not considered to provide an “Armenian” perspective, or at least not the correct, “mature” one (p.33)...

there's more, keep reading

The document seems to no longer be accessible in English from the Civilitas Website - luckily I saved it when it was still accessible. Click here to see the full report.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

here some thoughts for you...

screw robik mobik kapik
and screw oskan moksan foskan

Ani said...

Great semantic analysis, Tzitzernak. Yes, the words are very carefully chosen to give the appearance of fairness while obscuring the events and who was in charge of them. Too many people will fall for the gloss and competence of this report, because they have not followed the events closely enough. Luckily, the U.S. Human Rights report and the Human Rights Watch report document events more accurately, although they lack the narrative approach that people prefer to read.

Armen Filadelfiatsi said...

Tzitz, great job at pointing out the Grand-Canyon inconsistencies between what the present government says it is, and what it really is: a puppet government of the RF, that looks at killing ten people as charity, because they could have killed a thousand people, and then where would you hippies be?

Well, the next time Armenian scientists develop a more unbreakable encryption code, let's sell it to NATO.

Where will the poker-faced secret-agents be then? Right down in the shitter.smundita