Society

We stopped by a woman standing on the road and she took a seat in our car. She was going to the village. (I don’t mention the names of places, because they are all the same everywhere). She said it had been several years, that she lived in Russia with her family. I asked why they didn’t live in Armenia. She said, that they didn’t want to. I asked who was going to live in those villages if everyone left. She said those, who couldn’t live in Russia would live there. Her answer surprised us, but we kept going in our direction. We stopped near a village. The woman left us and disappeared in the half-ruined houses and uncultivated gardens.

These days, when everyone is discussing the constitutional amendments, I think, that one more point should be stated there: “The people living in Armenia are the ones who cannot live in Russia or anywhere else.'' Also, one subtext: “Due to not being able to live in Russia and anywhere else, people living in Armenia have the right to move, change their places of living and citizenship, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. I offered this point, because I think, that the legislation of a country should honestly correspond to reality.

And our constitution, which reminds me of a composition on “what I want to become when I grow up”, is as much connected with our wishes, ideas and will, as any other country's constutution. It is a fact that usually most of the wishes, expressed in compositions on “what I want to become when I grow up”, don’t come true. For example, I wanted to become a film producer when I was small. I wrote such a solid composition, that it was even read at our school teachers’ room in a high voice, but I didn’t become a film producer and I didn’t become a film producer due to several reasons. First of all, a couple of years later this wish disappeared, and it disappeared, because I learned about the “great” film and understood, that everything that can be done in a country like Armenia has already been done and we need a bigger country to do more. Besides that, I didn’t know, that several years later everything would collapse, and only the letter “M” will remain from Film. Now it is the same with our constitution. In 1995, when our new republic was going to turn four years old, this composition was written as a free topic. This was just a declaration of wishes or a directive, which stayed on the paper, like the wishes of children that write free topic compositions. With time comes experience and experience shows, that documents and reality are very different. It is impossible to calculate how many times the consitutional rights were violated after declaration.

But the first constitution clearly states all those rights and probably there is no need to change anything and probably nothing will change after amending it. The high authority is the people's desire. But what do the people wish? Except leaving Armenia, people want comapssion. One of the citizens of Yerevan, complaining about an oligarch from their district, said, that “he only takes care of himself” and glorified another one, saying, that “you should see how he takes care of the others”. I would not draw your attention to this example, if this person was unique with these kinds of ideas. And I don’t need to prove what I said, you can see this on a TV channel every day. Very often people say “you are God” to a person, who gives a chance to their untalented children to sing on that TV channel. But those people never think, that this man, whom they call as God, violates their children's rights not to sing. They don’t understand this, because they need compassion.

People also need to be protected. It is not the first time, that I say, that some 20 years old young men looked at a gorgeous car and sadly said: “The person driving this car was one of the bodyguards of that man". Please don’t be mistaken: the young men don’t want to have body-guards, but they want to become body-guards. This is a secret dream, which is not glorified in any free theme composition. They want to become body-guards, because by protecting other people they are also protected.

People also like to be financially secured. Again please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mean social security (a basket, where you cannot place all the eggs), but to be secured. You might have heard the phrase “a secured person” for many times. This doesn’t concern the people, who gained everything with their hard work (they are not many, but still there are people), but rather, it concerns those people, who rule state resources and take advantage of their position.

People also like to be free. People want to be free of taking matters into their own hands. People want to be free of any kind of civil responsibilities. And our opposition is directed by this freedom, and the opposition's most successful action is boycott. And this reaches success, because actually they don’t have to do anything. The phrase, that “Geghamyan is simply the best”, makes all the civil actions and rights strict.

The woman we spoke about at the beginning of this article is probably already in Russia. I didn't ask why she had come in the first place. Probably she came to the funerals of one of her relatives or came to collect the last things from her house. I didn't ask her name either, but I am sure she had been called as Hayastan, but everyone called her as Hayo or Hayast at home. Though her face didn’t express very much, I still remember it very well. There were small pimples on her forehead and a big mole near her nose. Her grey eyes were full of jealousy.

And now, when I read the constitution amendments of the Republic of Armenia, I see the eyes of that woman on each page, and I don't understand whether her way of looking is answering or blaming, but I am getting sure more and more, that we don't need a constitution, but rather, compassion, protection, security and freedom.