On May 4, 2012, during the RPA pre-election rally, balloons exploded in Republic Square. One hundred fifty-four were taken to the hospital with different degrees of injuries. There were no casualties. The “Opposition NGO-Union-Active” skillfully used the accident for its large-scale propaganda. The organizer of the event, the head of the RPA youth wing, Karen Avagyan, was called “Balloon Karen” for many years after that.
It’s been over ten years. Some of those opposition “activists” are now officials and MPs, and the other part continues their “NGO activity.” But now, when 15 young people died in the “barracks” fire, the voices of those same people are not heard. I put the word “Barracks” in quotation marks – we have all seen the picture of that building. And, by the way, all those “assets” once expressed their anger about the unsatisfactory conditions of servicemen, and then, after 2018, glorified the “strawberry.”After digesting defeat, they will digest everything.
But I am not inclined to blame only the “public sector” because those figures somehow express public moods. And the sentiments are known. As a result of the war, we lost 70 percent of Artsakh and, according to official data, 4,000 lives. That, however, did not prevent the defeated rulers from remaining in their seats. After that, the indifferent attitude towards any government activity should not be surprising. The loss of dozens of square kilometers (not 800 hectares) of Armenia’s sovereign territory, 120,000 Armenians being under a forty-day-long siege, the fatal accident of a pregnant woman by the Prime Minister’s “akhrannik”-bodyguard, and countless other events, including the banning broadcasts of the opposition Yerkir Media, appointing acquaintances and friends to positions, “conditional” tenders, expropriating property for pennies and selling it for millions – the society’s passive attitude towards all this is apparent. So, no matter how deplorable it is, I think these authorities will also digest the “barracks” fire.
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Apart from everything, people are just tired of living a public life. It is the result of both: targeted propaganda and natural patterns.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
