I hope that Nikol Pashinyan and his team will be leading Armenia for the next five years. Regardless of what type of government it will be, it is not desirable to have another change in government, new snap elections, and especially not another invasion of a police regiment or skirmishes at the border. Of course, they will not satisfy the majority of society’s expectations regarding the betterment of their standards of living. That will inevitably bring about some disappointment. But the level of disappointment will not be so high that it will cause hatred towards authorities and overall rejection.
The reason for this limited optimism is that there are no doubts regarding the new authorities’ good will. That’s how it seems if you aren’t looking at this with any other thoughts. Of course, they have made mistakes and will continue to do so. The main reason for their mistakes is that they made decisions, announcements, and evaluations based on their emotions. Particularly, the new government needs to change its mind about people who have differing opinions.
It is unnecessary to treat any type of criticism so extremely. If, for example, someone voices their opinion on the Artsakh conflict that doesn’t fall in line with official views, even if that opinion is completely wrong and unacceptable, that doesn’t mean that the person who voiced such an opinion is a traitor. It doesn’t mean that they’re an agent for foreign governments or that the NSS needs to investigate that individual. Perhaps that person is simply wrong, confused, or is dealing with personal issues.
This article, for example, will be read by, let’s say, 1,000 people. Half of them will like it, and half of them won’t. Perhaps some of the people who don’t like it will write angry comments. And then what? Is there anything shocking or surprising about this? Are the people who didn’t like this article, including a few of the angry ones, my personal enemies? I don’t think that way at all. They simply have different perspectives about life. And it will be unreasonable if I go online every few minutes to check who liked my article and who didn’t. It will be unrealistic if I expect for all 10 million Armenians in the world to “like” my posts.
Aram Abrahamyan
