When Nikol Pashinyan declares that history is not what has happened but what is going to happen, he is by no means seeking to free his political failure from the burden of the past. Yes, that problem exists, and however easy it may be for Prime Minister Pashinyan in rhetorical terms, in terms of public perception it is nevertheless difficult to endlessly distort victories and turn them into defeats, while presenting the defeat that occurred during his tenure as though it were a victory. That distortion is an exhaustible resource, because ultimately we are dealing with a society that has many flaws and educational deficiencies, yet is still very far from a critical degree of loss of common sense. Accordingly, it is impossible to endlessly convince people that victory was defeat and that defeat is victory.
Accordingly, he has embarked on an attempt to resolve the issue as a “package,” proclaiming that there was no history, there is no history, and therefore there is neither victory nor defeat. However, it is precisely here that the formulation deserves attention: history is what is supposed to be. And the whole problem is that this “what is supposed to be” is endless. In other words, you can never say: here it is, this is what was supposed to be, and it happened. Today there is always “that which is still supposed to happen tomorrow.” In other words, there is always a tomorrow. Consequently, it is always possible to say that history is constantly in the process of being created.
This, in turn, means that Nikol Pashinyan “cancels,” or seeks to “cancel” in public perception, not only yesterday as a unit of measurement or a point of reference for today, but also today itself as a point at which the situation can be assessed. De facto, he proposes assessing the situation by means of “tomorrow.” And since “tomorrow” is endless—there is always a “tomorrow” that will come tomorrow—Nikol Pashinyan is effectively putting forward his formula for endlessly postponing responsibility, or simply endlessly stretching the elastic band of irresponsibility. It is merely a “softer formula”: it does not involve the obvious distortion of a victory and its presentation as a defeat, or the distortion of a catastrophic defeat and its presentation as an “achievement.”
But can the elastic band of irresponsibility be stretched with such “endlessness”?
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Hakob BADALYAN
This illustration was created using artificial intelligence.
