Every government in Armenia tries to build its own legitimacy at the expense of rejecting the previous one. Why does it happen? What is its cause and what negative consequences does it have? But first of all, let us examine history.

Ever since 1988, the Artsakh movement, represented by the Karabakh Committee, has built all its propaganda on criticizing the communist government for both objective and subjective reasons. If we explore the issue of Artsakh itself, on which the ideology of the 3rd Republic was anchored, handing Artsakh over to Azerbaijan was a consequence of the unfair national policy pursued by the Soviet government.  By the way, the Karabakh Committee was created to correct that error.

Another ideological pillar was independence, which had to be won to get rid of the Soviet regime; the third was the idea of freedom - free market, expression of free will, etc. In short, we had to choose the values of the "Free World". The fourth point was liberation from the corrupt communist regime, that is, it was also a struggle against the social injustices of the Soviet party leaders. This had both objective circumstances, which were characteristic of all post-Soviet countries, and subjective ones because the issue of power was the basis, and by rejecting the previous ones, it was possible to come to power and form a new ruling elite.

This approach was continued later, Levon Ter-Petrossyan’s team was rejected for election fraud and "robbing". Robert Kocharian's team came to replace them, represented by a mixture of the former government and the former opposition, whose ideological foundation was based on disagreement with Ter-Petrosyan's “War or Peace? Time to Get Serious” article’s provisions. It was obvious that the new post-Soviet electorate was divided, Armenia's resources were not sufficient for everyone, and the "extraneous ones" had to be put aside. Those who were left out of the game, led by Ter-Petrosyan, failed to have their revenge in 2008. As a result, everyone began to reject everyone.

In 2018, street protests became a permanent and prominent feature of political life, as a result of which boys and girls from the "street" came to power. Thus they built the only legitimacy concept of their government, based on their main political thesis - rejecting their predecessors, both the former government and the former opposition. They did not have any other, future-oriented, positive, constructive theses for the legitimacy of their authority. And, as life has shown, assuming power without any program and a clear vision of the future, and without any responsibility, brought disaster to the nation. A significant part of the public, perhaps already the vast majority, now seems to be looking for new, more effective "deniers". This is the socially acceptable demand of the public today.

Now let's try to understand the other negative aspects of this occurrence. In sustainable countries, the political struggle revolves around ideas and proposals regarding the future: proposals to the public and their justifications in a language accessible to the public. This is the whole meaning of the formation of power through elections. Choosing not future-oriented promising concepts, but merely those rejecting the past and the present, means automatically destroying the positive achievements of the past, without having any project for the future.

The hard legacy of the "rejectionists" of 2018 should be a lesson to us not to go down the path of mere "rejection" but to choose a future perspective that, at least at this stage, no one has offered to the public.