Politics in Hayastan

[Haykakan]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

I Found an interesting post on the Constitutional referendum

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/ingar-solty-davit-stepanyan/post-democracy-in-armenia-how-new-constitution-will-d

I copied the interesting points:

-The proposed constitution does not stipulate that the state will take the necessary measures to realise its citizens’ rights to housing, or to provide social security for the elderly, the unemployed, those with disabilities, or those who suffer the death of a breadwinner. Furthermore, while these are irrevocable rights under the current constitution, I note that a citizen’s right to a fair wage no less than the minimum wage, and alongside the right to free healthcare, will henceforth be regulated by law.

-The proposed draft does not include current constitutional provisions stipulating that the realisation of a property right must not cause damage to the environment or violate other people’s rights and lawful interests, those of the public or the state. Nor does it include provisions on the human right to live in a healthy and favorable environment. Moreover, state officials will be exonerated from liability for hiding or refusing to disclose information on the environment. Taking into consideration the large volume of mining in Armenia, it is easy to imagine the consequences of these changes in the near future.

-In my view we should always be skeptical with regard to “reforms” from above, and question the political motivations behind them. From historical experience we know that democratization has never just been granted from above, from the powers-that-be.
Instead democratization has essentially always been the result of struggles from below which lead either to a new leadership or to processes of defensive democratization.

-In full proportional representation systems with strong parliaments, new parties can start by forming a strong minority opposition in parliament organically linked to extra-parliamentary social movements, such as the 2013 protests against public transit fare hikes or the 2015 “No to Robbery” protests against electricity price increases in Armenia – movements which are supported by some opposition parties using the parliament as a rostrum.
-My understanding is that the draft contains some intentional gaps, and some issues have been left ambiguous ( He is probably referring to The 2nd round of election to make sure a majority is elected).

-So, with regard to the real-concrete changes of the content of the Armenian Constitution, let me say that when I looked at the draft of the new constitution and compared it to the old one.Its main content does not seem to be simply a tool which would allow Sargsyan to remain in power after his second term. What appears to be crucial is that the draft of the new constitution wants to do away with the key remaining social-democratic elements of the Armenian Constitution, which limit the total power of capital. This includes Article 32 which still guarantees workers’ rights, Article 34 which guarantees housing and a certain standard of living as a social right, and Article 38 which guarantees free public healthcare as a social right. These Articles of the current constitution still envision and effectively necessitate non-market solutions when these rights are supposed to be realized.

By contrast, Article 85 of the draft of the new constitution now makes “the right to protection of health” as well as “the right to a dignifying existence” for “every person in need and every elderly person” dependent on “accordance with law”. In other words, universal constitutional economic and social rights are no longer unconditional, but they are essentially turned from democratic “must-haves” into (social-) liberal “nice-to-haves”, depending on whether state revenue from taxes in a private capitalist economy, as well as parliamentary majorities, allow for their realization.

However, in my view, the anti-working class and anti-democratic content of the new constitution goes even further than that. This can be seen, first of all, in how it allows for the restriction of the right to strike.

With regard to the de-politicization of the Armenian economy you have mentioned, one thing strikes me as crucial - the key formulation is the first defining sentence of Article 86 on the ‘Main Objectives of State Policy’ which now defines the state’s role in the economy no longer as “contribut(ing) to the employment of the population and the improvement of working conditions,” but rather as “improv(ing) the business environment and promot(ing) entrepreneurship.”

And all the other following tasks are formulated in terms of verbs such as “support” and “promote.” In other words, the state’s role in the economy is no longer supposed - yes, no longer allowed - to be proactive in terms of redistribution policies, let alone in terms of nationalizations and socializations of the commanding heights of the economy.

In other words, the draft of the new constitution rules out the kind of policies which enable a democratic state to guarantee economic and social rights through public employment, public investment and public welfare provisioning.

-Furthermore, under the new constitution, it seems that it would be totally legal to shift all remaining public and “free” Commons (in primary, secondary and higher education, public health-care provisioning, public pensions, social insurance etc.) into the for-profit private sector. In Article 60 of the new constitution on the ‘Right to Property’, property rights are supposed to be enhanced.

The new constitutionalism thus creates a situation in which parliamentary elections based on universal suffrage still take place and the illusion of popular sovereignty is upheld, while in reality parliaments have been essentially dis-empowered in the material issues that really matters.

-This is not just my opinion. Everything points to the west having dictated the constitutional changes as a counterbalance to Armenia’s membership of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). If the draft is adopted, Armenia’s system of government is going to differ from those of the other countries in the EEU, and it is going to be harder for Russia to control it.

It is no coincidence that it was after his meeting with Putin on September 3, 2013, that Sargsyan spoke about the changes for the first time. That was the meeting during which he was pushed to join the EEU. The changes are a compromise with the west, but regardless of that, Sargsyan and the RPA inserted provisions in the draft that are intended to protect their narrow group interests.

The saddest part of this story is that Armenian society has not yet found a way to protect its interests and effectively participate in this process. This society, which is straining under its post-soviet burden, is caught in the middle of its past, and rapidly spreading consumerism. But there is one contradiction which attracts my attention - (as unfortunate as it may be) if the draft is adopted, the actual situation in Armenia will be formalized, and people will lose their hope for justice which, even though it was non-existent in reality, was nonetheless written down in the current constitution. And now intellectuals capable of critical thinking can only ponder upon what can be done when a nation, having lost its vision of justice, rises up.

Well there you have it folks. Even more "western values" being forced down the throats of Armenian people. As I said before, the olis would not be so eager to pass this if it was not in their interest. The threat of outside influence under this new constitution will undoubtedly grow as the constitution itself now becomes all about money. This may backfire on the Olis as much more powerful foreign influences can take control of Armenia and even kick out the Olis.

[Hakob]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

This kind of constitutions EU has been forcing on all Warsaw Pact countries. Seems the population is unimportant, as long as countries are turned into big business playgrounds.

[Haykakan]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

This kind of constitutions EU has been forcing on all Warsaw Pact countries. Seems the population is unimportant, as long as countries are turned into big business playgrounds.

It is about monetizing. Once the country becomes all about money(constitutionally this time), those who control the supply of money will control the country. This is the bases of a monopoly which controls the price by controlling the supply. This is exactly what the Fed does in USA. The Fed controls the money supply and by doing so it also controls everything else including the economy and politics. No force interested in promoting Armenia's interests can compete in this scenario. I wonder if this is a shortsighted mistake by the olis or do they have some bigger plans in the making?

[Zeytun]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

Armenia’s Referendum Engineers Continuity Under a Veil of Change
01 December 2015
Laurence Broers
Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme
With its proposed constitutional changes, the country’s political elite is trying to ensure its survival, not instituting meaningful reform.

On 6 December Armenians will vote in a referendum on whether to introduce a new parliamentary system. Technically defensible on paper, the proposed amendments look set to continue, rather than challenge, Armenia’s political stagnation.

Although the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe body vested with the expertise to comment on constitutional design, has formally supported the changes, Armenia’s constitutional referendum has inspired little confidence from voters. Regime expedience, rather than institutional desirability or popular aspiration, appear to have decided the timing.

As President Serzh Sargsyan approaches the end of his second term, Armenia’s ruling elite faces a succession crisis, raising fears of a repetition of March 2008, when post-election clashes cost 10 lives and a deeply damaging schism between state and society. In 2018 the ruling elite would face the dilemma of either defrauding or fairly confronting an electorate depleted by migration but galvanized by opposition to Armenia’s January 2015 entry into the Eurasian Union, recurring protests throughout Sargsyan’s second term and increasing frustration at the closed oligarchic system embedded under his Republican Party’s rule. A succession crisis has effectively been averted by substituting a direct presidential election contested around recognizable personalities and issues with a constitutional referendum on a new political system, whose details are not only complex, but whose implications are unknown.

Institutional weakness

The combination of the amendments with Armenia’s political context indicate more a ‘progression’ from crude electoral fraud and state violence to a more sophisticated unitary rule by design. The amendments provide for the presidency to become a largely ceremonial post elected by parliamentary college system for one seven-year term only, while a prime minister nominated by parliamentary majority would hold executive power. Parliament, reduced from 131 to 101 seats, would be elected through a proportional representation system, although the amendments include controversial provisions aimed at ensuring the emergence of a ‘sustainable majority’ in run-off elections if no first round majority is reached.

Whether these amendments will result in greater institutionalization of Armenian political parties, or the further entrenchment of the ruling party, is uncertain. However, Armenia’s record of falsified elections and poor institutional accountability gives little ground for confidence that an embedded majority-holding party could be restrained. This could create the basis not for a revived party politics, but a growing fusion of ruling party and state.

The amendments also appear to weaken constitutional guarantees of social and economic rights, and introduce new qualifications to the state’s positive obligations in the fulfilment of these rights. This owes in some cases to a mechanical convergence with key European human rights documents (opens in new window). In the new constitution, the state would be relieved of the obligation to ensure the realization of several social and economic rights, being obliged only to promote their fulfilment. Several rights, such as adequate work conditions, social security and healthcare, would have a lower constitutional status.

The opaque process of developing the amendments, beginning only in 2013, has done little to assuage public scepticism. Reportedly very few proposals arising from a rather formal public consultation beginning in July 2014 have made it into the final package. With regard to the vote itself, concerns regarding falsifications of the number of eligible voters indicate that this referendum will suffer from the same core malpractices as Armenian elections.

There are two implications of a ‘yes’ vote. First, there would be little surprise if similar proposals would be raised in the de facto jurisdiction in Nagorno-Karabakh. Transforming the unrecognized republic into a parliamentary one, thereby underlining a differentiation in governance with super-presidential Azerbaijan, could offer the secessionist entity significant PR rewards, albeit dubious legitimacy dividends. Second, the already marked divergence between the elite and the Armenian street, marked not only in recurring street protest in 2011, 2013 and 2015, but also in a nascent tradition of civic initiatives, looks set only to grow. Armenia’s new constitution would offer even fewer opportunities for this new generation to participate meaningfully.

Whether this referendum is a Machiavellian plot to secure political survival, a scheme for unitary rule by design or a dilution of the state’s obligations in fulfilment of socio-economic rights (none of which are mutually exclusive), it reiterates a long-standing divorce between popular legitimacy and political change. The demands of Armenian opposition and civil society groups in recent years have been that the existing constitution be observed, not changed. There is instability enough in Armenia’s domestic and regional politics, and little reason why a leap into an unpredictable new system should be popular. If, as seems inevitable, the referendum is voted through, there will be fewer elections and an even narrower interface between electorate and elite in a country which still expresses a desire to move closer to Europe in spite of its coerced membership of Russia’s Eurasian Union. This is a referendum for elite continuity, not meaningful institutional change.

- See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/....UCzdRrjS.dpuf

[Zeytun]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

Election In Armenia:

[Haykakan]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

This Raffi is a retard. Check out this article.

RAFFI HOVANNISIAN: SEYRAN OHANYAN MAY BECOME ARMENIA'S NEXT PRESIDENT (VIDEO)

17:21 | December 7,2015 | Politics

On my return way from Gyumri and Spitak I was thinking about a
government official who stands out in this darkness and I think
that person is Seyran Ohanyan. You may agree with me or not, but I
think he is a real hero, a decent and devoted father," Leader of the
Heritage Party Raffi Hovannisian announced at Liberty Square today
when addressing the participants of a rally held by the New Armenia
Public Salvation Front.

Raffi Hovannisian said Seyran Ohanyan might become the next president
of the Republic of Armenia.

"And now I regret to tell you that the person who might become
Armenia's next president was actively involved in crimes committed on
a state level as he ordered our soldiers - the pride of our country -
to vote for widespread lie and fraud. Therefore, I call for Ohanyan's
resignation," Raffi Hovannisian said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVmwMoZHac

http://en.a1plus.am/1224682.html

[Zeytun]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

Well I Don't want to defend raffi, but the minister of defense encouraged people (Soldiers) to vote Yes. Thus taking a clear political stance (He claims he is independent), and i don't believe such actions are healthy for our army.

[Shant03]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

The hell is going on??

[Zeytun]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

All Change in Armenia
Posted by: THOMAS DE WAAL
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2015

The headline from Armenia following a much-disputed referendum on December 6 is that the country has a new constitution and will soon have a parliamentary system of government. But more people are paying attention to the short-term politics than to the long-term implications of the vote.

That is hardly surprising. The new constitution adopted in the referendum is a massive overhaul of the previous 2005 version, with only two articles surviving intact. There was no obvious need for such a big change.

As in most of the post-Soviet space, Armenian politics is an elite game in which the leaders change the rules to suit themselves, and the members of the public are mere bystanders. In this instance, President Serzh Sargsyan’s evident motivation for holding a referendum was to be able to change the game to secure his own political survival.
Over the past five years, the elites have changed the constitutions in all three South Caucasus countries. In Azerbaijan, there was no pretense that the change was about anything other than power preservation. President Ilham Aliyev followed the examples of the Central Asian states and Belarus in abolishing presidential term limits, enabling him to secure a third term as leader and rule more or less in perpetuity.

In Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili changed the constitution to limit the powers of the president, just as his second and final term as head of state was ending. Many anticipated that he was planning to stay at the center of Georgian politics by making the transition to the newly strengthened post of prime minister. But that proposition was never tested. In 2012, Saakashvili lost a parliamentary election, and his whole power base crumbled.

Now, in Armenia, Sargsyan appears to be attempting a similar maneuver to ensure himself the chance of a political future after his final presidential term expires in 2018.

The changed constitution gives Sargsyan the opportunity to stay at the top of public life if he wants to, by becoming either prime minister or parliamentary speaker. From 2018, Armenia will have a new president with largely ceremonial powers who will be elected for a single seven-year term. Most executive power will devolve to a prime minister chosen by a slimmed-down 101-seat parliament elected by proportional representation.

The most controversial provision of the new constitution is Article 89, which stipulates that if no party secures a “stable parliamentary majority” in legislative elections, there may be a runoff vote to ensure a governing coalition is elected. Some critics, among them Robert Kocharian, a former Armenian president and erstwhile ally of Sargsyan, have argued that this is a dangerous recipe for one-party rule. (Other critics have said Kocharian is upset only because the changes thwart ambitions he may have had of returning for a third presidential term akin to that of Russian President Vladimir Putin.)

There was almost no public debate on the changes. A poll by the Yerevan-based Advanced Public Research Group found very little knowledge about what the changes meant, with 71 percent of those surveyed believing that the amendments would go through regardless of what happened on voting day.

There were grounds for cynicism. A three-person delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe was critical of the referendum, citing inaccurate voting lists, a skewed media landscape, and “allegations of large-scale organized vote buying and carousel voting as well as pressure on voters.”

But it would be wrong to describe the Armenian public as passive. The “no” campaign, opposed to the ruling elite, was not powerful enough to stop the changes, but it was vocal enough to kick up a fuss. Social media have disseminated numerous reports of electoral fraud. These include the allegation that a one-hundred-twenty-year-old man, born in the year 1895, was registered to vote.

Such criticism suggests that in 2018, when Sargsyan’s term ends, if he and his team do make a play to keep themselves in power, they will face a backlash.

The short-term dynamics are worrying. But in the longer term, Sargsyan may have done everyone a favor. The bigger picture is that Armenia, a small, well-educated country with a professional class (albeit much depleted by emigration), is much better suited to a parliamentary style of government than to the executive power vertical it has at the moment.

In Georgia, constitutional changes were initiated by one ruling party, the United National Movement, with one set of motives: to further party members’ own ambitions. The changes were inherited by another ruling party, Georgian Dream, and the effect has been mostly positive. Georgian’s parliament is stronger than it has been for years, and there is a real division of powers—often more like a contestation—between the prime minister and the president.

Eventually, Armenia could get to the same place. Even before that, the country’s 2017 parliamentary elections could be a lot livelier than anticipated. The new constitutional change frees the opposition from a straitjacket in which it has been struggling for years: its lack of a credible individual who could be its presidential candidate in 2018. Now, the opposition’s challenge is slightly less daunting: to build a proper party machine capable of taking on the ruling Republican Party in two years’ time.

http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=62215

[Shant03]

Re: Politics in Hayastan

Came across this article... crazy how hard the west is trying.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samuel-ramani/democracy-derailed-how-ar_b_8838530.html

Democracy Derailed: How Armenia Has Become the Post-Soviet Region's Model Dictatorship

On December 7, 2015, Armenia held a landmark referendum on constitutional reform. The results were resounding. Over 63% of Armenians voted in favor of reforms that would greatly increase the power wielded by the Prime Minister and render the president's role in the Armenian political process ceremonial.

Even though decreased presidential power in CIS countries is typically associated with democratic consolidation, liberal Armenians expressed severe discontent with the referendum's outcome. Opposition MPs in Armenia and European politicians accused regime officials of electoral fraud and criticized the lack of meaningful open political debate on constitutional reform prior to holding the vote. Four thousand Armenians protested the government's handling of the referendum in the streets of Yerevan immediately after the results were announced, confirming the predictions of Armenia experts that the regime would be destabilized yet again by mass unrest.

Despite these protests and the fierce rhetoric emanating from established opposition groups in Armenia, it is intriguing that the current wave of demonstrations have not escalated to the levels witnessed in the summer 2015 Electric Yerevan protests. This failure is a testament to the success of Serzh Sargsyan regime's authoritarian consolidation efforts. Even though the July protests were largely motivated by popular discontent with Armenia's relationship with Russia, Sargsyan successfully deflected these concerns to benefit of his regime security. The Armenian regime has effectively addressed the domestic undercurrents of the protests while simultaneously exploiting crises in Turkey and Nagorno-Karabakh to receive more extensive support from the Kremlin.

Why Sargsyan's Response to Electric Yerevan was Effective

Even though Armenia has a long tradition of popular protests forged from the transition experience and the instabilities associated with authoritarian consolidation in the post-1991 period, the summer 2015 protests in Yerevan posed a distinct challenge to Sargsyan's regime security. Unrest occurred outside the context of an election cycle and the extensive participation of previously apolitical youth and urban professionals in the protests highlighted the extent to which civil society in Armenia had matured in recent years. The anti-Russian undercurrents of the Electric Yerevan movement fueled many comparisons with the Euro-Maidan revolution in Ukraine, especially amongst Russian observers. At points, Sargsyan's long-term future appeared uncertain, with chorus of premature political obituaries drumming louder as unrest worsened day-by-day.

Sargsyan effectively defied these naysayers by demonstrating that he had learnt the lessons from Viktor Yanukovych's ignominious demise in Ukraine. Instead of resorting to mass violence to restore order, Sargsyan attempted to appease the protesters with concessions demonstrating his ostensible concern for their economic plight and demands for a less corrupt judicial process.

Six days after the protests began, Sargsyan made a public statement insisting that the 17% hike in electricity costs was necessary to ensure Armenia's power grid was operational. But to alleviate the financial burden, he announced that the government not households would cover the excess costs until an independent audit of the price hike was completed. To prevent opposition movements from snowballing in retaliation to gratuitous police brutality, Sargsyan launched a police investigation into officers involved in the June 23 crackdown. A senior regime-affiliated member of the police force was demoted and police officers involved in the repression were reprimanded.

Sargasyan's deft accommodation of the Yerevan protesters' grievances prevented the electricity protests from escalating into a national popular revolution. The absence of unified leadership amongst the Armenian opposition and the increasingly abstract nature of their agenda following the government's concession on the electricity issue ultimately defused the protests completely.

To prevent a more cohesive challenge to the Republican Party's 16 year long hegemony over Armenian politics from emerging, Sargasyan has attempted to stimulate the economy by borrowing from international lenders and by presenting Armenia as an economic bridge between China and Europe. He also launched an ambitious constitutional reform agenda weakening presidential power to present a more credible façade of democracy to the international community, while providing a gateway to a potential run for a third presidential term.

When opposition movements resisted these measures by claiming that Republican Party was trying to institutionalize a one-party system in Armenia, Sargsyan devised a divide-and-conquer strategy to marginalize the opposition and exploit its disunity. Amidst allegations of bribery and by courting Russian assistance, the Prosperous Armenia bloc supported the regime's proposed reforms, dissolving the opposition troika formed several months earlier.

As a result, opposition blocs like the Heritage Party who opposed the Sargsyan reforms became increasingly hostile towards those who acquiesced and experienced defections amongst their own ranks. The regime's clever political machinations ensured that the December 7 referendum was met with much more muted opposition than one would have expected on the heels of Electric Yerevan.

Armenia and Russia: A Tightening Partnership

The second prong of Sargsyan's authoritarian consolidation strategy is a counter-intuitive one: deepening Armenia's partnership with Russia. The Electric Yerevan protests highlighted Russia's eroding soft power in Armenia and diminished popular support for integration with Putin's Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) during a period of economic recession. Sargsyan's channeling of public anger away from Russia and towards Armenian domestic policy by appearing to crack down on government mismanagement and police brutality was a risky move. But in the long run, it has crystallized Russia's support for Armenia, at a time when Azerbaijan has been attempting to thaw relations with the Kremlin.

Russia's increased support for Armenia once again upholds its reputation as the leading guardian of authoritarianism in the CIS region. The head of the Federation Council's Foreign Relations Committee Konstantin Kosachev described the summer 2015 protests in Armenia as bearing "all the hallmarks of a colored revolution." Elites close to Kremlin insinuated that Western-backed NGOs had a hand in fomenting instability in Yerevan.

Sargasyan's new found sense of vulnerability implored Russia to tighten its alliance with Armenia. In late October, the Russian government proposed the creation of a joint air defense mechanism with Armenia as part of a broader plan to create a CSTO aerial umbrella extending to Central Asia. Armenia also received a $200 million loan from Russia, which would be used to purchase long-range weapons and military hardware vital for the modernization of its military.

The sale of arms at discounted prices during a period of economic crisis in Russia and a brewing debt crisis in Armenia is a telling sign of Putin's commitment to preserving the bilateral relationship. It also repaired the strains created by the January slaying of an Armenian family by a Russian soldier, an event that caused Regional Studies Center director Richard Giragosian to speculate that an end to Armenia's security dependence on Russia was near.

In addition to stoking fears of uncontrolled popular revolutions that could diffuse to Russia, Armenia has curried Russian patronage by exploiting regional crises. The recent inflammation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been at least partially attributed to Armenian provocation. Azerbaijan's defense ministry on October 1 accused Armenia of violating the ceasefire 80 times a day by using heavy machine guns and mortar shells.

In tandem with these escalations, Russia has become increasingly confrontational in its rhetoric about the Karabakh conflict. Russian ambassador to the OSCE Aleksandr Lukashevich recently described Turkey's unconditional support for Azerbaijan as detrimental to long-term prospects of peace and an infringement on OSCE responsibilities. The economic aid and coercive capabilities the Armenian regime has received from Russia depend in part on Armenia facing credible security threats. Creating an atmosphere of perpetual crisis in the South Caucasus therefore plays right into Sargsyan's hands.

Armenia's scathing condemnation of Turkey's recent downing of a Russian jet over its airspace, and solidarity with Russia's counter-terrorism campaign has also strengthened the Sargasyan regime's ties to Russia. Sergei Mironov, the chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament, submitted a bill on "holding to account" deniers of the 1915 Armenian genocide. The prospect of a major Russian military buildup on the Turkey-Armenia border has also become more realistic.

Yet unlike Yanukovych who made integration with Russia or the acceptance of the EU association agreement a mutually exclusive choice, Armenia has been able to balance increased Russian support with a multi-vector foreign economic policy. Armenia has actively co-opted Chinese investment, received 30 million euros from the EU to improve fiscal governance, and has reopened negotiations on a broad-based bilateral framework agreement with Europe. Sargsyan's successful free-riding off regional crises has given him flexibility and leverage that Ukraine's elites lacked in 2013, and has put Putin in a position in which escalating support for the Armenian regime is the only way for Russia to maintain its leverage in the South Caucasus.

Sargasyan's mixture of shrewd concessions, deflection of blame away from Russia to domestic institutions and exploitation of international crises to curry Russian support demonstrates that he has learnt the lessons of Maidan. His successful experience could also provide a powerful role model for other authoritarian Russian allies like Belarus or Kazakhstan, in combatting future mass protests and neutralize the effects of liberal civil society development.