Galust Sahakyan, the leader of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), compared his colleague, MP Zaruhi Postanjyan, with a woman who stands on a highway. To anyone who was raised in Armenia and is more or less aware of our language features, such an expression is a badly-concealed sexual slur. Frankly speaking, I haven’t completely understood what “Nzhdehism” means, after all, but the Republicans say that it is national conservatism. Does insulting a woman, a mother of four, from the parliament hall correspond to that ideology? It seems to me that nationalism begins with delicate – I would say deferential – attitude toward the woman, the continuer of the nation, the enricher of the nation’s gene pool.
I have always written that attacks on women for political reasons are just disgusting. The politicized part of our society took such an attitude toward Naira Zohrabyan, for example, when the latter was not an “alternative”; the same thing continues now with Arpine Hovhannisyan, Margarit Yesayan, and Shushan Petrosyan. “Justification” is always the same: “Well, if they are women, let them not be engaged in politics, otherwise, let them be ready for anything!” However, this is not about disagreeing with their ideas – I don’t like most of their speeches either – but about insulting those MPs, as women. So if Zaruhi behaves like a “Xantippe,” I have a right to insult her. By the way, there is a difference between these expressions: the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) women are insulted on Facebook and websites, while Mr. Sahakyan voices his insult in the hall where the country’s legislature convenes, which is blameworthy.
However, the RPA parliamentary group leader made a more interesting statement during the National Assembly briefings yesterday. He said that he was not going to apologize to Zaruhi Postanjyan; he had never apologized in his life, because he had lived such a life that he had never felt the need for apologizing. Let me inform Mr. Sahakyan that there no such man on the planet Earth, has never been and will never be. So even theoretically, there cannot be a mortal who has lived such a life. Even much more scrupulous people than we are, such as, for example, St. Augustine, Grigor Narekatsi or Blaise Pascal, repented on many occasions and expressed that repentance through their brilliant works. Claiming that you have never done such a thing in your life that would make you apologize is a very self-conceited idea, to say the least.
…Dear Zaruhi, I by no means support your political force, but I apologize to you in Galust Sahakyan’s stead. I do that on behalf of all men, which include Mr. Sahakyan and myself.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
