Before reading this article, please watch this video of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s visit to the Shirak and Aragatsotn Provinces on February 17th. The Armenian leader spoke to residents of the Mastara, Ashnak, Nerkin Bazmaberd, and Ujan villages who were mainly middle-aged and elderly. The video is only 15 minutes long, but I think that it provides an opportunity for people to get a good picture of our country and society.
Perhaps some people would say that these stops were not coincidental, and the people who were gathered in these places were chosen beforehand. I don’t know if that is true or not. It seemed strange to me that ‘a representative of the people’ in the Ashnak village of the former Talin region, where, as far as I know, the Dashnak influence is very strong, asked the Prime Minister to also ‘get rid of that political party.’ But let’s step away from these doubts for a second and accept that these people were speaking from the heart.
And so, during the meeting with Pashinyan, none of these representatives of the ‘ordinary people’ asked, “Mr. Prime Minister, how did we lose the war? How do we have thousands of casualties and wounded soldiers? How did we lose 70 percent of Artsakh? How are people now Azeri targets in the border villages of Syunik?” Someone who has seen Nikol Pashinyan for the first time after November 10th should naturally be interested in those questions, I think. But it seems as though the residents of those villages are not interested in those issues at all. They instead are focusing their attention on internal passions. Specifically, they are demanding revenge against the “pro-Serzh/Robert” crowds. It seems that this is the most important issue in our country, according to them.
If this mentality is widespread throughout Armenia, then the current Prime Minister not only has a ‘carte-blanche’ to govern the country over the next few decades (that is not the biggest tragedy), but he also has the ability to do anything illegal, including handing over any village or region of Armenia to the enemy. After handing over each village, one can shoot an ‘enemy of the people’ to the delighted cries of the ‘electorate’ presented in the video.
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And here, I do not blame Pashinyan as much as I blame the ‘pro-Serzh/Robert’ crowds first and foremost for ‘lumpening’ society over the past two decades, as a result of which people stop using their brains, their primitive ‘marble’ instincts are awakened, and their sense of statehood and homeland is dulled.
The citizens are asking the Prime Minister to ‘get rid of the velvet.’ I wonder if they know what the ‘velvet’ is? Or were they prompted?
Aram Abrahamyan
