Ashot Gziryan, the governor of Shirak, said during the “coronation” ceremony of newly-elected mayor Samvel Balasanyan, “Let Georgians not boast that they are the first to hand over power peacefully, through an election, actually it first happened in Gyumri.” Unfortunately, Mr. Gziryan is wrong – it is just that the former mayor started to get on the nerves of his “bosses” with his eccentric son having criminal inclinations and they decided to replace him with a more even-tempered person. It is not a peaceful handover of power. But even in this case, I can imagine certain ceremony, which the former and current mayors should have respected. Samvel Balasanyan and Ashot Gziryan should have been present at the Gyumri Town Day and stood next to Vardan Ghukasyan at the event, no matter what kind of a man he was. Vardan Ghukasyan should have been present at Balasanyan’s “unction” and congratulated him regardless of how he treated the new mayor.
Some people may think of it as formality and affectation. But these very “formalities,” repeating year after year, become a culture. The meaning is the following – we are citizens of the same country, officials of the same state and that title is much higher than our personal or, perhaps, partisan controversies. In Armenia, the opposite repeats and becomes a tradition, a culture – the one whose term in office (at the national or municipal level) has ended sets a life goal to prove how wonderful it was when he was in power and how much the newcomers have spoiled everything. The newcomers, on the other hand, want to prove at any cost how awful the life was when the “former criminal regime” was in power, what a bad legacy they have gotten and what heroic efforts are required to fix all that.
The opposition-government struggle since 1988 has basically boiled down to this – “it wasn’t like that when we were in power,” “it was worse when you were in power.” The society learns that this is the pivot of “political debates” and when a certain figure or force proposes discussing the issues concerning the country in essence, that proposition is just ignored and the given force or figure appears as a person of secondary importance. Instead, HOW pleased a mass of “politicized” people are with the dialogue between Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) and the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), when representatives of the two parties give each other venomous “advice.”
Therefore, ethics, etiquette, ceremony (whatever you call it) are not mere formality. They are means to conceal or reveal real problems.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
