It turnс out that I took an interview from two Heritage Party members on the same day last week – from Larisa Alaverdyan and Zaruhi Postanjyan . I like both of them, I take a human liking to both of them and would like very much, if they became MPs. However, if you read my notes on the internet, please, watch for 2-3 minutes the videos of both shows and you will see that Ms. Larisa is calm, relaxed, changes subjects easily, Zaruhi on the contrary – she is very uneasy, weighs every word, trying to find the most accurate and influential definitions. The reason for that difference is absolutely understandable – the former ombudsman is not going to become an MP again and that is why she chose the 41st place on the Heritage Party list and the former counselor, on the other hand, is in the 3rd place on the list (which she absolutely deserves) and most probably will become an MP again through majoritarian representation. Different levels of responsibility and aspirations presuppose radically different attitudes.
Generally, I divide politicians not into pro-government and opposition politicians, not into kind and evil politicians and neither, certainly, into “criminal-oligarchs” and “saint-altruists,” but into hollow (as poet Thomas Stearns Eliot would call them) and non-hollow politicians. Hollow ones think with given clichés, formulas and they think the articulation of those is the best choice for political and propagandist struggle. Non-hollow politicians invent or try to invent new formulas at every moment, which can be wrong too, but have an advantage over ready stereotypes. Non-hollow politicians are ready to deny a movement that has already paved a certain way at any moment and enter a new field. I can make the example of Tigran Torosyan as a non-hollow politician (with his many sins) who doesn’t want to become an MP not because he doesn’t have the possibility to stay in the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) with his mouth shut and continue enjoying his seat, not because he is offended or hurt by anything, but just because he has found a more interesting and pleasant thing than politics to do. Certainly, a smart man must sense the threat of his possibly becoming “hollow.”
When one asks people why they want to become an MP, they usually give absolutely hollow answers. And non-hollow answer would be, for example, “Being an MP is fun.”
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
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