One of the most widespread errors is confusing birthday with anniversary. For example, many say or write ‘this year marks the seventieth birthday of Komitas’ or ‘this year marks the 15th anniversary of Armenia’s independence’. You have to know the basics in order to not make such mistakes-birthdays only refer to joyous events, while anniversaries are the opposite.
November 27, 2006 marked one year since the constitutional amendments referendum of the Republic of Armenia. Is this a birthday, or an anniversary? I can’t really say because no event took place-neither a festival nor a mourning ceremony.
Some people may say that based on the state/official calendar, Constitution Day is July 5th, which marks the day that the first constitution of Armenia was approved, but that would actually mean something if there was a big celebration on that hot, summer day. At least I don’t remember seeing a celebration or fireworks. It was simply a day off from work or school. The presses wrote that the president and the prime minister of Armenia had congratulated the Armenian people on that occasion and had wished to see the people stay true to the values instilled in the constitution, such as democratic values, legal, social, etc. By writing this I don’t intend to throw down the reputation of Armenia’s principal law. No matter how much they say that the referendum didn’t really take place, Armenians still got a chance to liberate from the authors of the old Constitution because based on rules of religion (the Apostolic Church), baptism and the testimony of that may only happen once. If the Armenian has chosen one of the members of the “Rule of Law” party as the godfather while being baptized, he can’t reject him in the result of change of situation because the vow made to God can’t be changed. Now Armenian oppositionists will say that the first and especially the last referendum of the Constitution has nothing to do with religion, belief, faith and similar things, but they won’t really make any sense because for the time being, no matter how good or bad that Constitution is, it functions with help by the interested European organizations and the embassies of interested countries, making them the godfathers.
This means that there is no preservation deadline for the values instilled in the Constitution (they used to call them directive in the not too distant past), that those directives function as long as nobody has considered the Constitution invalid during his nervous breakdown. So, long live democracy-the well-known, most effective way of state administration. But if the people, with their strives and goals, are not part of this most effective way state management, then it may change and become, let’s say, democratic centralism, a term from the time of directives, which means “all for one than one for all”, although it was presented the opposite way back in the days.
Now, if we Armenians analyze the current situation of the pre-election campaign, we’ll see that there is both democracy and democratic centralism, but the people don’t really get anything out of the two. The “Prosperous Armenia” party (PA) announces that it has more than 2,000 members, which means that there are 2,000 people working for ONE person. The Armenian Republican Party (ARP) announces that it has one strong father, which means that ONE person is working for everyone.
In case of a natural disaster, both are condemned to failure because both know that the lower mass relies on them because they nobody else to rely on.
When I say natural disaster, I don’t mean the earthquake or heavy hail. In this case, natural disaster can refer to the reincarnation of the dead, which serves as a topic for debate among religious figures with knowledge of religion.
But…it’s a birthday today and it’s not worth talking about debates; it’s better to look at cemetery inside the country in order to not miss out on the reincarnation of the people.