“Now, we will consult with the people. As the people decide, so it will go.” Such an expression is made by inexperienced and even experienced public and political figures when they are unable to decide what to do. In reality, this consultation is not worth a penny, as at that moment, the selection of doctors of sciences and academicians or a crown of homeless and drunk may come to your “hand”. Depending on when and on what occasion this “people” are gathered.
There is no need to consult in the political rally, you may not doubt, the more profanity your language is and the demands – radical, the more enthusiastically the people will approve your projects. Usually, everything logically ends up with the calls to occupy Baghramyan-26, which raise a furious wave of delight among the protestors. Relative and partial success of the movements: “Mashtots Park”, “I am Against” and “I Will not Pay 150 Drams”, are provided, in my opinion, by the fact that the activists were not consulting with the “people” and were pushing their own agenda ahead.
In particular, “I am Against” movement was composed of mostly young people working in the field of high technologies, which are receiving high “white wages”, and for whom the 5 percent loss of the “mandatory accumulative pension” would be significant. Should they have gathered around them grannies and grandpas who are in extreme vulnerable social condition and iterate 4-5 storey blasphemy addressed to the authorities and begin “consulting” with them, then they (I repeat, partly) would not have achieved success. Instead, “I am Against” movement, without consultation, chose the exact legal path: the Constitutional Court, and by using the potentials of the parliamentarians, achieved the court’s decision, generally acceptable for them. This does not mean, of course, the needs and the moods of the pensioners should be ignored, simply they tend to political mottos: change of the government, resignation and so on, and for this reason, there are political forces, which are “specialized” in such calls.
When I hear cheap populist demagogy spiced with words like “with the people”, “for the people”, “next to the people”, a question constantly arises in me, “Based on what typical features are they making their generalizations?”
The citizens’ (not the “people’s”) opinion is asked only in one case – during the elections. In this area, we certainly have no way to brag, the findings of such “consultation” are distorted.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
