Despotism: The Camouflaged Usurpation of Power

A Comment on the Formation of
Pan Armenian Council of Western U.S.

BY Z. S. Andrew Demirdjian

In our Western democratic society, people elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf. Democracy dictates that a few self-elected council members would not only be inappropriate, but also a very outrageous method to represent the whole community without a vote.
There is a word for this kind of action that results without a citizen’s vote: it would be despotism, the usurpation of power.
Popular culture describes the United States as a democracy. Most scholars clarify and define it as a constitutional republic. But in a sense, the United States would be neither if it transitions to being run as despotism. Despotism is usually defined as absolute and arbitrary possession of authority without the consent of the people. President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) warned against it in a letter to William Jarvis, on September 28, 1820, by writing: “This [the rule of the few] would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
Self-perpetuating oligarchy is the thing of the past. We live now in the 21st century with the aim of abolishing the old ways of the 17th-18th-century schemes of running social, business and government affairs. We need to be represented by elected members of the community by means of a popular vote so that each citizen would have the power to replace, when the need arises, the deadwood representatives serving on the council.
Without democratic elections, the Pan Armenian Council of Western United States leaders would be considered illegitimate representatives of the Armenian community by hijacking the prerogative of every Diaspora Armenian’s unalienable right to vote for their preferred candidate. Those who are guided by strong convictions of democratic principles would abhor the camouflaged usurpation of power by a small group of ego-driven, self-serving individuals.