Armen Mazmanyan, the rector of Yerevan State Institute of Theater and Cinema, hasn’t been offered to be included in the RPA list for the city council, but even if he had been, he wouldn’t have agreed. “If I had wanted to be involved, I would have been involved in many things long ago. There are a lot of things and responsibilities that I hardly manage. I prefer not to deal with those. We separate politics and life into two groups; those who talk about it and those who do it. I prefer to be among those who do it. I don’t think that I would have benefited the city council, if I had been in it. Or it would have been worth spending my time like that,” Mr. Mazmanyan said during a conversation with www.aravot.am. In his words, the RPA should start to convince the voter to believe in the promise of “Better Yerevan” with deeds. “From now on, the ruling party should make strategic decisions, moreover, with deeds, with results, so that the people overcome that depression and lack of trust. I mean radical changes will make it visible; one should know that when he enters the courtroom, he is protected by the law.” In response to our question whether he could notice the government’s political will to take those steps, he said: “I don’t know, I can’t tell. They should think and do that, otherwise, I predict a very chaotic situation and a very complex political stage till the next National Assembly election, if there are no qualitative changes, and those changes are not strategic – for example, how to moderate the issue of emptying Armenia, first of all working with the customs service. Because nowadays mainly Armenians who have customs problems, face trial, and have problems with loans leave Armenia. They get into trouble because of 500 000, face trial, then sell their houses and flee the country. The small and medium enterprises are dying out. There is emigration because of that. Such severe and abrupt increases in prices in the field of healthcare, dentistry. What do we want to do; do we want these specialists to leave? One should eliminate the reasons for emigration. One should declare an amnesty right now; people are liable with their houses, factories, after trials, they are corpses because of the percentages they are compelled to pay. The government should solve such urgent issues, in order to win the people’s trust. The social field, the legal field, competition, absolute decapitation of oligarchs. We have had enough of one person’s supplying us with sugar and flour; those sugar and flour are bad. And all of us see that. There is an issue of the nation’s health; the issue of the production quality should be solved…. So the government should deal with these problems and very quickly and efficiently, in order that the people see the result of it; one cannot regain trust otherwise.” In response to our observation that the solutions to all the problems he had pointed out had been in the programs of the RPA for both the National Assembly election and the presidential election, whether the lack of solution to those problems showed that the RPA’s promises had been on paper as yet, Mr. Mazmanyan said: “No, it is not like that either. Anyway, one shouldn’t bury one’s head in the sand like an ostrich and say that nothing has been done. There have been changes in the past 4 years; the political stage is more placid, there is some progress. It is a different matter that it is not global. One must say that it is the time to carry out promises and not with small amounts, but with fundamental and serious reforms; moreover, reforms as a result of which the citizen himself will feel those. Those economic calculations – what percentage of growth we have had, by how many positions we have improved our ranking…. This is not a race, this is not a sport. It doesn’t convince us; one should feel it.”
Arpine SIMONYAN
