A few days ago one of the organizations held social polls, according to which Prosperous Armenia Party has the highest rating among others (22%). The rating of all the other parties doesn’t exceed 5%. The elections are on the way, thus the number of such researches will be increased. The results will also be different but one thing is for sure: our society doesn’t much care about ideologies and they only “deal on things, which they want at the moment”.
Is it so though? Of course everything can be explained by pragmatism of our people. Armenians always do so. For example the regular citizen has two options: either struggle for the development of his home country (which may last for decades) or leave for another country for a better life. Most of our people prefer the second option. Same happens in the inner political life. The opposition promises to build a country, where “everybody will have potatoes” (this may last for decades) and the government is willing to give the potato now. This situation indeed is more unfavorable for the opposition. A question is originated – whose fault is it that people have become indifferent to ideologies?
Let us bring only one example. Whenever we start to speak about the former government, the society says “they won’t ever let them come back” because they still remember the cold and dark years. It turns out that the society refuses to accept the government just because the Azerbaijani have been blowing the gas pipeline every other day for the period of 12-13 years. Whether it’s fair or not we are not going to speak now. The point is that the ideological party is being refused not because of ideology. And the initiator of this “social riot” are both in government and opposition. Why do their worry about ideology now? Why would the struggle be ideological if the right-liberal NDU and social forces are jointly fighting against right-liberal RPA and Dashnaks coalition? And now they get offended about the fact that the party, which has the highest rating, doesn’t have ideological grounds.
In fact the issue is even deeper. During the 70 years of Soviet period the people obtained substantial immunity against any ideology and this inertness still continues. Do you remember that during that period everybody was dreaming to grow up to become a prosecutor, “militia”, pilot and doctor to serve their socialistic fatherland. They were writing about this in their school essays. Every normal person wants to live in a legal state, have favorable lifestyle. But if you ask them what would make them happy they say that their number dream is to have Mush and Van retrieved and the return of Sasun would make their dream even more complete. In other words, there is serious contradiction between the real desires of the society and ideologies.
There is contradiction to the value system of the society and the future of the country. The problem is that the mentality of most of the society is East-oriented (which is not bad at all) but the state is trying to develop based on Western standards. It’s evident as long as those contradictions exist the legislation will never be endorsed in Armenia. There is no other way: either the mentality of the people must be gradually changed or the laws must be written in an “Eastern” style.
The greatest problem is that this contradiction gradually grows. This means the laws become even more “Western” and the mentality of the society becomes more “Eastern”. For example, one hundred years ago none of the Armenian lyrists would ever think of writing a song about Mantashoff. A question originates. Was the mentality of our society 100 years ago more west or east oriented?
There is no need to frown about the fact that the society has become apathetic about ideologies. The intention of living peacefully and normally is an ideology as well. All the political parties have to do is to formulate it in a right way.