The Central Bank has finally found the way of regulating the financial market of Armenia and tools for keeping the field away from turbulence. It turns out that the resolution only needed one cartoon to be filmed and named “The Monster of Inflation”. It’s a very good cartoon. Two children want to buy pies but it turns out that the pies’ price has risen. The salesperson easily explains to them that the life has improved; there are more people, who can afford to buy pies. That’s the reason they are more expensive. That’s all. They don’t go in many details. A counter question would be, “if the buyers have increased why don’t they produce more pies?” The salesperson would perhaps scratch his head (accepted in Armenian cartoons) and say that the economy of Armenia is extremely monopolized. There is no competition. That’s why the businessmen prefer to agree among each other and raise the prices in order to have super profits. See, little kiddies? From know on life has become better so you just live with half a pie. The little monster of inflation can be slightly restrained, but only in cartoons. And the CB President can easily announce, who said that we should protect the interests of exporters?” He doesn’t speak much either. Perhaps he doesn’t know that whatever he does he will protect the interests of exporters. The difference is that there are both local and international exporters. In this case he chose the second group of exporters.
In general it’s very popular not to go into details in all sectors. For example, the number one priority of the Karabagh conflict resolution at this stage is whether Aliyev and Kocharyan are going to meet or not. The co-chairmen are doing their best to make this meeting take place. They define terms and deadlines. Why?-because 2007 and 2008 are pre-election years. They don’t go too deep because it’s pre-election period. Thus there is little possibility for signing any treaty. And we will try to understand the logic of the co-chairmen.
Before elections in all countries the authorities are trying to do positive things. They visit military bases and tap the shoulders of soldiers, open new enterprises, cut laces and even reveal a few cases of slight corruption and make angry speeches… Shortly said before elections the government starts to think about people. Furthermore, they ponder a lot what people will like most and later do it. They try to avoid unpopular steps.
And now it turns out that in the opinion of the authorities the resolution of Karabagh conflict (signing any document) is a very bad thing. It’s so bad that no government would ever dare to do it before elections. Is it so though? It’s evident that the current situation of the conflict problem creates certain problems for both Armenia and Azerbaijan. And the problems especially directly touch the regular people of the countries. Thus, it would be more logical if the authorities tried their best to solve the conflict prior to elections. It would obviously be the best campaign ground. It would be much better than cutting laces of adding a couple drams to the seniors’ pensions. A strange thing takes place in our country. The country is potentially at indirect war and has serious problems. However the government doesn’t urgently solve them reasoning that people wouldn’t like it.
It’s understandable that the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan don’t particularly rush to resolve the conflict and stipulate it by “pre-election issues”. The odd thing is that the co-chairmen of the Minsk Group of OSCE seem satisfied by those reasons and most importantly they sometimes bring up those arguments. This can mean only one thing. The international community has a very bad opinion about our society and thinks that our people are not capable of thinking and classifying their interests. Moreover, the mentioned thesis has even once had an official formulation. Do you remember this formulation? “Perhaps the governments of the two countries are ready to sign the document but the societies are not”. Are you sure? In 1997 Armenia and Azerbaijan came to a principal agreement relating the resolution of the conflict. How many people went out to protest on the streets in Armenia and Azerbaijan? Besides the Serbian society wasn’t quite ready for the regulation of Kosovo Issue but the international community didn’t much care about it.
Thus, the problem is not the societies. The international community must be ready. And nobody wants to live in a factual warfare – neither Armenia, nor Azerbaijan and nor Karabagh.