I don’t know why – perhaps it is because of my age or professional experience, which is roughly the same thing – but I am not inclined to dramatize any event and accompany it with our tradition Armenian (Eastern) “uh-oh.” Including yesterday’s events.
About the church in Abovyan: whether Tsarukyan likes it or not, he is in politics, he is the leader of a party, an MP. Naturally, some people like his character and some people don’t. And the opening of the church yesterday is interpreted willingly or unwillingly given the current political situation. However, the issue here is whether the first church ought to be built in the center of that town or not. When there is a dilapidated 10th-century chapel in some village, and a former resident of that village who has become rich in Russia decides to build a new church suited to his taste, it certainly testifies to his ungrounded vanity. However, Abovan became a town in the 1960s, and there was a need for St. John the Baptist there. In 20 years, no one will remember today’s political sentiment, and the church will remain. I for one would very much like, if there was at least a small chapel in Zovuni, because, I think, a house of God is where one should go on foot.
About the Prosperous Armenia Party’s (PAP) not being opposition: what sensation is it? Has any member of the PAP said something different? (Vartan Oskanian just expressed such a wish.) It is a different matter that some oppositionists pinned certain hopes on that party with regard to the “bourgeois democratic revolution” and “breaking away from the oligarchy,” but those oppositionists will never admit that they were wrong. And if, given certain interests, one part of the government criticizes the other, it is normal; no one needs homogeneous government.
In the end, about people’s “gorging” on the open-air refreshments: admittedly, those scenes, to put it mildly, don’t give esthetic pleasure. I know that many people will not agree with me, but there is no reason for mourning here, let alone asserting our people’s “disgrace.” Many readers probably witnessed what happens in the enlightened West when discounts are offered at shops. Residents of Western cities attack trade centers with more enthusiasm than residents of Abovyan refreshment tables. There was a report in Aravot about Christmas discounts on Boxing Day in London (https://www.aravot.am/2011/12/27/22357/). Can anyone claim that residents of the British capital are hungry, needy or that Prime Minister David Cameron robs them and has reduced them to such a condition?
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Our people is neither better nor worse than the others; it is an ordinary people like all the others. The “massive attack” on the food is no national feature; it is the mob’s ordinary desire of free goods.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
