“For some people, the power is necessary to exploit, oppress and make the homeland fall apart, whereas for the people, the power is necessary to solve their problems and accomplish their goals.” Guess who has said it. Perhaps, Levon Ter-Petrosyan in the recent rally? Or, perhaps Tigran Urikhanyan or Vahan Babayan? No, you did not guess. This was said by NDP member Davit Vardanyan in the evening of September 25, 1996, prior to attacking the Parliament. And the target of the then opposition, of course, was Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his team.
Let us not discuss the question as to what extent Davit Vardanyan’s allegations were true, (in my opinion, with regard to the first president, it was absolutely a lie), and to what extent the attack on the National Assembly was justified (NDP members say that it was not an attack). I focus on other two circumstances. First, the nature of the charges and the vocabulary have not been changed over 18 years. The accents are the same: the power is in the hands of bad people; well, as soon as it appears in the hands of people (not in ours, the opponents, but in the very people’s hands, we are one the representatives of the latter), then people will start fulfilling its goals and resolve problems.
The second circumstance is that after one and a half year, a number of NDP members, in other words, “people’s representatives”, standing on the barricades on September 1996 – Tigran Sargsyan, Davit Vardanyan and Seyran Avagyan, came to power. Whether we can consider that thus the power was handed over to people’s hands, and the aforementioned figures, who, followed by this logic, were the people itself, began solving the people’s problems. Or, it would be more accurate to say that they began solving their own problems. The point is not about personalities. I am sure that there have been and are more indecent officials in Armenia.
The point is about the methodological error. It seems to me that the opposition members, and not only them, but also the public figures and publicists, we all wrongly direct the citizens, we are going towards populism by the path of the least resistance. “Dear people, you do not live well, because the bad guys oppress you, when the good guys will come, they will not oppress you but solve your problems.”
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It is both easy to say and pleasant to the ear. Every man who lives bad and listens to this judgment, says in the mind, “Oh yeah, right, I’m so good, I’m so hard-working, kind and decent, and indeed, the bad guys are the cause of my hardship.” Once the person thinks in this way, they begin to oppress him and make the homeland fall apart.
This process terminates when every man asks himself whether he is good enough, hard-working and kind. But, to instigate people to thinking, is not accepted. They will eat raw.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
