The “state” doesn’t do much in Armenia nowadays. It doesn’t matter if it’s for a good or bad cause. The state doesn’t play a role in any field. In fact, people can’t even differentiate what’s being done for a good cause and bad cause.
For example, is it a good thing that Yerevan has “turned into an enormous construction site”? In some way, yes, because after all every city has to develop sooner or later.
But…Don’t worry; we aren’t going to talk about the “architectural separatism of the city”. That’s a different story. We are going to talk about another issue.
What is the state doing about “elite construction”? Please note that Armenia’s population is not rising. Of course, there are thousands of homeless people in Armenia, but “elite construction” doesn’t help reduce the number. So, it turns out that only a couple of thousand families are insured homes. But the state doesn’t deal with this at all. In that case, why are the lands given by the state to “take care of the state’s expenses”? What expenses?
What we don’t know is whether or not people will actually live in those newly constructed buildings located in the heart of the city. They’re really not worth it. They won’t turn into “office territories” because usually businessmen have offices and the number of businessmen in Armenia is decreasing. I don’t know if you have noticed or not, but there are not such things as “elite buildings” in Moscow or St. Petersburg because there are only “elite complexes”. An “elite building” is one, which doesn’t have any other buildings surrounding it, has parks, tennis courts, a swimming pool, etc. How can you have an elite building when a child can’t even go out and play in the yard? But this, I repeat, is the contractors’ problem. Our problem is that the state doesn’t interfere in anything. It doesn’t construct homes for the homeless and as a result, it turns out that Yerevan has “turned into an enormous construction site”. But that benefits neither the state nor the citizens.
Let’s talk about another issue. Armenia is going to take part in a “unity tree planting” soon. This is a good cause because the number of trees will increase. But why is the chief prosecutor of Armenia in charge of that when the state should be the one taking matters into its own hands? True, the country is economically poor and the government hasn’t been able to provide the Ecology ministry with enough money. The chief prosecutor surely had to fight against shady enterprise so that the budget could enlarge, so that the ministry could get some financing, set out plans, organize a tree planting…but there is a long road ahead. Based on the “Armenian mentality”, there is a shorter route: the chief prosecutor of the country organizes the “unity tree planting”. As a result of this, there will be more trees in Armenia. But what’s sad is that the state doesn’t help solve essential issues and leaves it all up to the state officials. What if the next chief prosecutor doesn’t care about ecology and decides to organize a “unity deforestation”? Trust me, the same “activists” will take part in the event with enthusiasm. In other words, the final result is important, but not always the goal.
Conclusion: there is no such thing as a stabilized government in Armenia. Governmental structures don’t serve the people. But since the government has certain functions, individual high-deputy officials are ordered by the president or take the initiative of “doing something for the people.” However, since the state is not the one making it a reality, there is no state interest. For example, the government wants to develop sports in Armenia. Good for them. They should pay attention to it, but instead of having many champions, the Armenian government only cares about having many people involved in sports. The state’s “approach” to this is to open many gyms, build stadiums, and it doesn’t really matter how many champions Armenia will have. Of course, it’s nice to see people spend loads of money to see Armenian athletes raise the Armenian flag in international championships, but this field doesn’t develop that way.
The list of fields goes on and on and no matter how many, we still come to the following conclusion: nobody really cares about “state interest” today.