Once again the clock will strike twelve and signal the New Year when the president of Armenia says the words “Happy New Year”. In contrast to his other wishings during the year, the president’s New Years’ address is different in that he says what he has to say as honestly as he can because there is no need to fake the well-wishings. To be honest, the people like to hear the well-wishings. After a year-long intermission, the Catholicos of All Armenians will make his speech to the people just a couple of minutes before the president’s speech. His well-wishings would be pleasant to hear if it weren’t for the year-long interval. But you can’t consider the New Years’ well-wishings as the most essential event when you take a look at the year in review.
The most significant piece of information heard worldwide this past year was when NASA announced that the U.S. plans to allocate a permanent base on the Moon by 2024. The southern part of the Moon has been chosen as the part to create a colony. There is 70-90% light here and thus solar batteries can be recharged. However Americans are getting ready to use the dark craters of the Moon to find moon ice, which will serve as a soure of oxygen for the astronauts and a source of fuel for rockets. NASA experts are certain that the first people will settle on the moon by 2020 and there will be an interexchange of groups every six months. By multiplying and dividing the amount necessary for this operation, experts say that it will cost 150 billion dollars. Americans are very honest when it comes time to explain why they want to go to the Moon. They say that the Moon will serve as a transit road to travel to Mars. Although there is enough evidence not to believe this, let’s just mention that Bush made an announcement that the spacious territories are part of the national interests of the U.S. ; so, the U.S. is ready to create obstacles for other countries to fly to the Moon because that endangers U.S. national interests. This doesn’t endanger Armenia because the Armenian authorities and the political field are on Earth and there is no intention to fly to space. Taking a look at last year, we see that although the year wasn’t full of events, however the events that took place in the political field of Armenia will leave a trace for many years to come.
Last year, National Assembly MP and businessman Gagik Tsarukyan entered the political field. In fact, throughout the whole year, Mr. Tsarukyan appeared two times at the National Assembly, for which he was known for being consistent and a deputy who knows a thing or two about the political field. More and more members are joining his party not day by day, rather hour after hour.
The next significant event that took place was the resignation of Arthur Bagdasaryan as Chairman of the Armenian National Assembly. Mr. Baghdasaryan hasn’t had successful tries to make it in the opposition as an avant-garde political activist because there are many oppositionists who want to become leaders yet there is only one open position. However, the third event surpassed the other two-Defense Minister of Armenia Serge Sargsyan joined the Armenian Republican Party. After Sargsyan joined the party, many Republicans, which used to agree with Garegin Nzhdeh’s ideas illegally, now had the chance to come out from the underground and quickly join the Republican Party.
Perhaps the most dangerous announcement of 2006 was President Robert Kocharyan’s announcement/threat when he said that the Karabakh conflict negotiations would freeze unitl the presidential elections with the purpose of not speculating the issue and because the perspectives for politics and economy are not promising. Perhaps 2007 will be an interesting year if we look at it from that point of view, but the mad struggle to have a mandate in the parliament which has already begun and the fact that this year is the year of the pig doesn’t serve as a good basis for optimism and belief in miracles. As a rule, only children believe in miracles and their wishes are mainly to see Santa Claus and his bag of presents. But during the New Years’ play at the Young Spectators’ Theatre on December 26, it became clear that the children weren’t really waiting to get anything from Santa Claus because they have already lost their trust in him. They look at Santa Claus as a stingy, poor old man from whom you just can’t get any present. Literally speaking, Santa Claus appeared at the end of the play, wished the children a Happy New Year and approached them at the end of the play just to take pictures. Children wondered where the presents were. Santa Claus promised to give them presents but later. And since “later” means something else, the children quickly left. This is the same way that the citizens of Armenia lose their faith and trust, the citizens who are promised fair elections, resolution of the Karabakh conflict, a future, which can be seen…but later. However, we’ll refer to this next year. Now it’s time for the holidays which, fortunately, don’t depend on our choices, much less the results of the election.
