When I write that our main problem is the public, the majority of people does not agree with me and keeps believing that evil, greedy, and criminal people must be substituted by kind and generous people, and everything will be changed. The perpetrators must be severely punished.
But in reality, no severity is needed. The problem is much simpler. If let’s suppose my son committed a crime, he must undergo a trial and be imprisoned. Learning the news of his arrest, I must not break my head against the wall to help him escape or mitigate his punishment. He must take the same punishment as any other “abandoned guy.” Will I do so? I highly doubt. Because I will be accused from all four sides of “having no blood call” that my son is in trouble and I did not stir a finger that in this unjust country one should not run after the principles. I will be reminded, “what about Poghos’s son”, “what about Kirakos’s son.” Well, now, imagine a government official and a minor or senior official in my place who has more than 100 or 1000 leverages than I do. If I am thinking so then why he should think otherwise. We are abstractly complaining, “Eh, impunity,” “eh, arbitrariness” but when it comes personally to us, we visualize the reality much “broader and multi-layered”.
Our next public problem is that we are not citizens, nor voters but cadgers. Recently, one of the young candidates in a private conversation with me was puzzled that a significant part of the people whom we meet during the campaign has no idea what it means to live in a state, and consequently, it makes no sense to talk to these people what kind of country we want to build.
A typical episode: a young man approaches Gagik Tsarukyan during the campaign who is going to talk to the public. First, he is trying to appease the PAP party leader and say bad things about Serzh Sargsyan. But Tsarukyan interrupts the young man asking “not to politicize” because he knows very well that “political component” is only the “preview” while the original “movie” is cadging. Indeed, “I do not have this, I do not have that, give me a job.” In such cases, Tsarukyan solves the problem by a “working mode”: write your phone number and apply to the such-and-such person and you will have what you want. Without going into details whether this such-and-such person needs this young man. Here is the whole campaign and the ideological struggle.
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Those who have completely lost their dignity are just asking for almsgiving during the elections (which is pleasantly given to them during this period). Those who have not yet lost the last crumb of dignity say, “give me a job” (assuming apparently that they will spend some time at a company and receive a salary in return). In the 21st century, in the conditions of market relations, a job is not begged but created. It’s hard to understand it but without the consciousness of it, we will not be able to build a stable state.
