As it is well-known, it is difficult to organize debates in Armenia. The deputy candidates are very capricious in that issue. If someone is in, say, 7th place on their party ballot, then they would consider it to be beneath them to debate with someone who is in, say, 11th place on their ballot. They also bring forth the following arguments: “who are they for me to debate with them?” “they are not a politician like me,” and more. Someone who came from overseas as a guest asked me why this tends to happen.
I don’t know how well I was able to express myself in English, but now I will explain my observations in more detail, and why I personally would never participate in a debate. There are three reasons for this. One is for professional reasons. If you want to report on any campaign, you cannot present yourself as being on anyone’s side; that casts a shadow upon your report. But even if those professional limits didn’t exist, I still would not participate in debates for professional reasons. I would lose in any debate, because it’s like a contest for rappers. You need to be able to make decisions quickly and to never let someone defeat you. When someone says something witty, viewers will say that so-and-so gave a great response to so-and-so, they destroyed them, or, as people on Facebook would say, they shut them up. But I am not able to shut someone up, nor do I wish to.
Finally, there is a third reason, which is a philosophical one. I am not convinced that my opinion is worth more than the opinions of seven billion other people. The difference between the way we understand things is massive; there are as many different ways of understanding things as there are people. For example, when I say “dog,” I am referring to the dog that I imagine in my mind, but every single one of those seven billion people imagines their own dogs with their own features. Which one of us is imagining the right dog? It’s unnecessary to argue.
And now we have gotten to my answer to my foreign guest’s question. I don’t participate in debates because I consider my views to be relative. The candidates for deputy don’t participate because they consider their views to be the only ones. They get offended when someone else voices a different opinion, and when they envision a different “dog.” As you can see, the extremes coincide here.
Aram Abrahamyan
