Mher Arshakyan, a journalist of A1+, is a fine and well-bred man, he is experienced and reputed; he is intelligent and professional. I have said this not only to praise my colleague, but also to assert that he is not an adolescent girl or boy who has just graduated from a cooperative college and whom the President of the Republic of Armenia talked about on Monday. Let me remind that during a conversation with journalists, Serzh Sargsyan didn’t agree with my observation that the MPs who were engaged in entrepreneurship were uneducated and illiterate. According to the president, it is just that journalists working in the parliament are not skillful enough and cannot reveal the real intellectual capacity of MPs, have a serious conversation with them.
So during the two days following that press conference, Mher Arshakyan tried to put into effect the plan of disclosing the hidden talents of MPs engaged in entrepreneurship with all due respect and delicacy. You can watch on the website of A1+ what results those attempts yielded. Alik of MAP and Artak of SAS rudely refused the offer to say at least two sentences for two days, the Brother-in-Law of the Poster did that in a more civilized way, Navo and Schmeiss were kinder and were able with great intellectual effort to utter 1-2 sentences, which, however, didn’t contain rather complete ideas. Can we assume from this that those people who refused to talk to the camera cannot measure even up to Navo and Schmeiss? Certainly, it is not ruled out that they will give an interview to some newspaper or website (without a video), but it “doesn’t count”; they will pay some literate who will attribute to them such deep thoughts that Socrates would have envied.
You can object that a person may not be an orator, may not read any book in his life, but do very useful work for society – for example, produce canned food or open shopping centers working very well. Yes, it certainly is so. But firstly, it seems to me that in order to vote for or against a bill, one ought to read the text of that bill. Secondly, such people’s presence in the highest legislative body of the country – and such people are not only in the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), but also in the “alternative” Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) – set certain standards of behavior and worldview. So however much those people are criticized, a stereotype emerges in the subconscious that “the master of the country” should be like that. I by no means want to see only bad things in our country, including the parliament. I also realize that one cannot establish democracy or the rule of law overnight; it is a culture that is formed by the whole society. However, there are issues that can be easily solved, one-move combinations, so to speak. They will not solve global issues, but will change the atmosphere. And all of us, even the brass, know what the atmosphere is like.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
