By Christian Garbis

On March 19, I went to the third of five scheduled public forums held at Liberty Square organized by the Barevolution movement for this week. More will be taking place in the near future. A public rally is scheduled for Friday at 6 pm.

The forum speakers were Karapet Rubinyan, who was the deputy parliament speaker from 1995 to 1998, and human rights defender Avetik Ishkhanyan. Both of them spoke effectively, with brief, potent comments. They were to the point and even blunt in their answers to questions posed by the moderator as well as some in attendance. And you could tell, especially with Rubinyan, that they weren’t feeding the public with banal rhetoric, but were speaking from the heart. Both of them are clearly impassioned when it comes to Armenia’s future, as are many other spokesmen for the movement like Nikol Pashinyan and Andreas Ghukasian.

It was refreshing to hear such an exchange of opinions coming from intellectuals in a public space. This type of forum in Armenia is unprecedented, or at least I have not seen it before, and if that’s the case it’s unfortunate since I am likely not the only one with a Western background who hasn’t encountered it. This is true democracy in action where people can exchange ideas freely, and although there were several police officers weaving through the crowd (and likely undercover ones as well) whose very presence can be intimidating, that didn’t faze anyone. There were only a few hundred people in attendance, perhaps a little more, most of whom were middle aged, but there was an energy that permeated that crowd, and the understanding that democracy can actually work in Armenia was definitely getting through.

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