Who really escapes from the sinking ship?

24/05/2006 Armen BAGHDASARYAN

After the recent political developments connected with the Rule of Law, the Armenian press has started describing these developments as a sinking ship and say that rats leave the ship first. Till now no one who has left the Rule of Law has agreed with the idea that they acted like rats.

In fact escaping from a sinking ship like rats is not such a bad thing. Why do rats leave the sinking ship first? The reason that they feel the danger first is the fact that they are deep inside the ship and in case of any damage they see the water stream first. The most interesting thing here is the fact that rats appear in ships not for the purpose of having a sea trip, but for eating the food that the ship has in its depot. Question: what should rats do if the ship is sinking? Why should they stay in the ship and sink with it? Is it worth it?

Now let’s speak about the Rule of Law. According to the press, the Rule of Law is the sinking ship, and the businessmen MPs that left the party didn’t want to sink together with the Rule of Law. No, I don’t mean Sergo Yeritsyan. On the other hand this political figure is very amazing and will continue being amazing. In fact I think that there are two groups that escaped from the sinking ships. Maybe the sinking ship was not the Rule of Law, but the coalition headed by Kocharyan. In this case it turns out that the sinking ship is not the Rule of Law, but the Rule of Law in fact is the first one escaping the sinking boat… oops…

This scenario is really very interesting. The ship is sinking; the crew is leaving the ship by small boats. Since there is no food on these small boats, the rats jump out of the small boats and swim to the ship, because they think that there is still food to eat in the ship and they will be able to escape from it whenever they want.

Does the coalition headed by Kocharyan really sink? In order to answer this question, first of all we should understand what is happening inside Armenia and with the Karabagh conflict. The people are very poor and the fake growth in numbers drawn by the statistics services is not able to save the situation. Our country is like a company that is having losses, i.e. spends more money than gets. The production doesn’t develop, migration is increasing, our economy does not develop, etc. As for the Karabagh issue, it may lead to terrible results and it is the iceberg that Kocharyan’s ship may crash to.

What will happen to Armenia? Either there will be a war with Azerbaijan in the near future (if the parties don’t sign a peace agreement, Azerbaijan strengthens its army and attacks) or there will be serious political changes in the country if the contract is signed (after which we will have to return some territories). In other words, either Kocharyan is busy all the time and will not attend international meetings until Azerbaijan gets good money from the sale of oil or Kocharyan will not be able to resist the international pressure and will sign the contract, after which the nationalistic powers (of course with the help of the Kremlin) will change the rule (but that still doesn’t mean that there won’t be war in this case).

This is the reason why Kocharyan doesn’t accept the invitations and doesn’t take part in international meetings. Why should he participate? What can he do? If he signs the contract, it will be bad for him, if he doesn’t, it will be worse.

Arthur Baghdasaryan knows this very well. He could understand this very fast and it was the right time for that. Why should he stay in a ship that may crash into an iceberg at any moment? In other words, we shouldn’t hurry to make assumptions on who the sinking ship is and who the one leaving the ship first is.