1in.am The incident in Shaki quickly revealed the political issue of the opposition as well. Again, in a negative sense.
The presence of an Azerbaijani soldier in the territory of Armenia demanded very specific answers from the authorities. How did he cross the border? Why had the search efforts yielded no results? What information did which service have? Why had the residents of border villages not received a minimum warning? What gaps exist in the border control system? Who is responsible for them?
This was a ready-made agenda for the opposition. It was necessary to take that agenda and carry it through to the end.
They did not.
Instead, the easiest path was chosen again—noise, pathos, another story of "betrayal," another burial of the peace policy. As a result, the question of the government's responsibility was pushed to the background, and the opposition once again found itself in the role of exacerbating the situation.
When the same mistake is repeated, it is no longer an accident but a characteristic.
The Shaki incident is primarily a matter of security for people. They want to know whether their soldier could get lost, cross to the other side, and return home tomorrow. A resident of a border village must be confident that an armed person cannot infiltrate deep into the country unnoticed. A parent wants to understand whether the state is controlling the border.
These simple human fears do not require politically charged speeches.
The opposition once again failed to address the real concerns of the people.
Pashinyan's position regarding the proposal to exchange the Azerbaijani soldier for one of the Armenian captives is a separate and serious topic for discussion. The opposition should have taken the issue further—from the fate of one soldier to the overall issue of border security.
The issue is to have clear rules for tomorrow. Such incidents at the border cannot be completely ruled out, so the state must have operational communication channels, agreed procedures for the return of soldiers, and mechanisms for the rapid investigation of each case.
The mechanisms established today can also protect the Armenian soldier tomorrow.
This is not a matter of emotions but the ability to calculate the state's priority interests.
The Shaki incident should have been viewed exactly this way. The border is still not fully demarcated and delineated; there are gaps in control and technical provision in certain areas. The main political demand should have been their rapid elimination.
Accelerate the demarcation, complete the delineation, equip the border, install modern observation systems, and create clear warning protocols for border communities.
The border is not a place for the opposition to crow. It is the most sensitive line of state responsibility.
After the war, peace is maintained through daily, precise work.
It is strengthened by clarifying borders, operational communication channels, and daily technical decisions.
Armenian politics has long preferred grand words over concrete work. The opposition also continues to build politics around those same words.
The border is maintained through clear decisions, an operational system, and responsible governance.
This also explains the deeper crisis of the Armenian opposition.
Being in opposition does not mean saying the opposite of everything the government says. Parliamentary opposition is part of the state system. Its job is to monitor the authorities, expose mistakes, force corrections, propose better solutions, and support the right decision at the necessary moment.
This last part has almost disappeared in Armenia.
Support is perceived as betrayal of one's own camp. Agreement is seen as weakness. Rationality is viewed as ideological retreat. For this reason, politics turns into theater, and parliament becomes a stage. Everyone plays for their audience.
The state has no audience. The state has interests.
That interest sometimes requires criticizing Pashinyan. Sometimes, it requires supporting his decision. Sometimes, it requires proposing a third solution. Every time, the criterion is the same—Armenia's security, resources, risks, and long-term interests.
The Shaki incident was a serious examination of the shortcomings of governance. It could also have become a test of the opposition's maturity.
The result of the first examination still needs to be clarified.
We have already seen the answer to the second.
Armenia needs a new quality of opposition. Not louder voices, but better calculators. The state's interest is much more prosaic than the highest rhetoric about "ethereal homeland." Sometimes it is merely a border post in the right place, an operational camera, and a message sent to the villager in time.
It is from these small things that real sovereignty is built.
* This text was automatically translated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
