Trust is a wonderful thing. I recently had an interview with a representative from the World Health Organization who came to see when Armenia will be accepting the law restricting smoking. He thought that nothing is affecting that now. It’s highly likely that the new National Assembly will be accepting that law next year, and there’s hope that smoking will be banned entirely in closed places.
If the revolution didn’t happen, and the old government and old National Assembly remained, then that law would have most likely not have been accepted. The opposition deputies would have held strong speeches, and would have shown that this is yet another way to oppress the people. Several hundred people would have written statuses on Facebook, saying something along the lines of, “Haven’t you had enough of robbing these poor people? And now you’re not letting them smoke! As soon as you leave, there will be no more problems, and people will stop smoking.” The citizens did not trust the previous government, and regardless of what initiatives it took, the people rejected its every move. Now it’s just the opposite.
The same goes for the Gardasil vaccine. Before, “as it was known,” the RPA wanted to ruin women’s uteruses with the Gardasil vaccine. Do you remember how much controversy surrounded the vaccine (which, by the way, are voluntary; if you don’t want it, you don’t have to get it)? Now, that same Gardasil is safe. Why? Because the country’s authority now belongs to the people. I write that without any second thoughts. That’s how everyone is; if a rope is on the ground in a room, when in the right mood, it can look like a snake.
Trusting the government and, I hope, the National Assembly, is a positive phenomenon. No matter what sector we look at, massive changes need to be made starting from the foundations. Now that there’s trust, those changes need to be made quickly. The National Assembly that is to be formed on December 9th has a huge role to play in that, taking into consideration the fact that we live in a parliamentary republic. Now we just have to hope that there will be politicians in the new government, not people from the former criminal oligarch system.
… Can you imagine what would happen now if any armed group (God forbid) attacked a police station? How many people would welcome that?
Aram Abrahamyan
