To be honest, the urgent problems are so much spoken and written about that recently a great desire arose in me to address to the so-called “origins” in my editor’s columns, at least sometimes.
How it comes that what we call a “4-day war” has affected the public mood and the consciousness of the citizens but has almost not affected the political elite and the government. Over 25 years, it is talked about the fact that the government is not a “nation-devoted”, “it is thinking alone about its own pocket,” etc. These assessments are mainly appropriate but they are taking the public demands in a wrong direction. We do not need a “nation loving” or “about-nation-thinking” authorities, they are overly subjective lyrical effusions.
We need a government that will respond the public demands adequately. Certainly, you would say that it required a legitimacy. Of course, it sounds nice but the reality is different. Almost no one questions the legitimacy of the Supreme Council in 90-95 and the president’s in 91-96. But (of course, my friends will argue with me) the then the government was not implicated to the needs of the citizens, it was indifferent, arrogant and often vulgar. Hence, the reason for the current “slowdown” of the authorities must be sought elsewhere.
Especially today, the representatives of the “political elite” are notable with their kind of “untimely” and “irrelevant” manifestations. Maybe I do not find the exact word and now I am saying much stricter and more serious words but the traditional qualification does not fully describe the phenomenon. In my perception, they are the “new Armenians” of the 90-ies who not just miraculously appeared in the 21st century but are also trying to solve some issues in “not their” time.
These “issues” generate from their outlook: to “privatize” something, to squeeze in some business, “run a small business” and “eat a piece of bread.” All this with the look of a ” nation-devoted” and “thinker”. In these years, on the background of the sharp changes in the world and in Armenia, these fossils are like a man who suggests a toast “in relation to the godfather” during the global forum on high technologies. This “inadequacy” existed in the past 25 years but today, it is more vivid and let me say, ridiculous. The presence of “people from the past” is partly explained by the fact that so far the demand of being a ” nation-devoted” and other worn-out approaches are not completely eliminated from the political discourse. These “dinosaurs” in this ” nation-devotedism” mutable field still have something to say because it is ultimately the option of the same “godfather related” toast.
But its time is running out. Incidentally, it is running out rapidly. The demand will now be much more dramatic: carry out your responsibilities before the state. And as to whom you love and what you think, it is up to you.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
