Recently, mass media was very surprised to learn of the new parliamentary record: the parliament approved 31 draft laws in 20 minutes. The parliament just needed 39 seconds to approve each of these bills. Pro-government Mass Media was happy about this record and we understand this; in fact, they officially approved that the parliament as an institution doesn’t play any role and is phony. Later they moved on to politics. In fact, they were right to give such nick names as cats and dogs to MPs because this scenario was exactly what was going on in the parliament, and I think that Sadoyan didn’t have to say that “the world is a theatre, and we all play our roles”. The best estimation was given by Hmayak Hovhannisyan, when he compared the parliament with a cattle-shed. He made everyone laugh; besides that, the speeches of the number one zoologist of our parliament have always made people laugh. But in spite of this, people were really interested in who the thief and the “other one” were. Alas, there were no detailed comments later. But the problem was solved. People will hardly take part in the 2007 parliamentary elections. Why should they do this if they want to elect a parliament and later it turns out that they have elected a cattle-shed? Armen Shekoyan has written a good sentence which sounds well, “Their eyes are disgusting, deep and ugly, they were born to be ugly, cheap workers, but they became deputies”. In fact, this is not new in Armenian reality. For instance, during the last years of the Soviet Union, when there were judicial cases that had a strong public feedback and they had to open their doors and conduct the process in transparent conditions, they did the following: before starting the process many citizens were sent to the hall to occupy the free seats and then they said that it was going to be open but there wasn’t any free place to sit in the hall. This is how our parliament is formed. The authorities don’t want to see oligarchs and other powerful people being elected in the parliament. It is in their interest to exclude normal people from the parliament. And now let’s discuss this topic. Why did this process start and why is it so complicated? At first the Rule of Law announced that they were going to leave the coalition and join the opposition, but these kinds of things happen even during wars, when someone from somewhere takes up a white flag and joins the enemies. Why should they kill him? Is there any need for that? What’s more, there is no need to do that and they should accept him very well, give him tea, treat him well and try to get information about their army. And if someone kills these kinds of people, people start to suspect and think that the one that killed the soldier may be a spy because he stole their opportunity of getting good information. Is Arthur Baghdasaryan really dangerous for the authorities? Not for the time being, but in the future he may be. For instance, he may join the opposition and become a uniting power for a part of the oppositional powers. The opposition has a problem with choosing a leader, because Artashes Geghamyan and Stepan Demirchyan think that they are the only leaders, but the other powers don’t agree with them. However, things may change. The authorities are starting to worry about this tendency because Arthur Baghdasaryan is supported by the West too, and besides that international pressure on the current authorities is getting stronger. In spite of all these developments, our experience shows that as soon as the positions of the authorities are getting weaker and the opposition is getting stronger, Artashes Geghamyan starts taking inadequate steps. Maybe this is just a coincidence.
