Expert: Fourth Republic is not to begin with Kocharyan`s arrest

ArmInfo.  The Fourth Republic doesn't begin with the arrest of Armenia's second president, leader  of the opposition bloc "Armenia," Robert Kocharyan. Political  scientist Vahe Davtyan writes this on his Facebook page.

"The Armenian government's Program for 2026-2031 effectively  identifies the transition to the Fourth Republic as one of the goals.  However, a republic is not a point in a five-year plan or a political  brand for the next electoral cycle.

In a political and philosophical sense, the change in the republic's  number marks a gap in the foundations of legitimacy, the structure of  power, and the nature of relations between the state and society,"  the expert wrote on his social media.

He recalled that France's path from the First to the Fifth Republic  was shaped by revolutions, wars, the collapse of political regimes,  post-war reconstruction, and, finally, the profound crisis of the  Fourth Republic against the backdrop of the Algerian War. The Fifth  Republic emerged in 1958 not as a government programmatic mandate,  but as a response to the exhaustion of the previous order.

Davtyan further noted that the Sixth Republic in South Korea was also  the result not of an administrative decision, but of a mass  democratic movement in 1987, which ended a period of authoritarian  rule and led to constitutional reform and direct presidential  elections.

The expert emphasized that in both these cases, a profound  socio-political and historical transformation occurred first, and  only then did a new republic emerge.

"In Armenia, the reverse sequence is being proposed: first, the  Fourth Republic is proclaimed as a goal, and then it is supposed to  be imbued with political and institutional content. The government  can initiate reforms. It can propose a new Constitution or a model  for state development. But it cannot turn the emergence of a new  republic into a departmental target. Against this backdrop, the  Anti-Corruption Court's decision to remand second President Robert  Kocharyan for two months takes on particular symbolic significance,"  Davtyan believes.

He further noted that the de facto launch of the official discourse  on the proclamation of the Fourth Republic coincides with the arrest  of one of the key figures in the political history of the Third.

"Yes, a state governed by the rule of law does not presuppose  immunity for former leaders. However, statehood can only develop  within the logic of continuity, not fanatical rejection of the past  and its personalized criminalization. A new republic begins not with  the arrest of a former president or the rejection of the Third  Republic, but with the emergence of institutions capable of  accommodating the full complexity and contradictions of national  history. Otherwise, we are not looking at a Fourth Republic, but at  another version of the Third," Davtyan concluded.