After the events of March 1 and the presidential election 2008 people have numerously said that the image of Armenia has suffered much as a result of those events. However, in fact it is very difficult to understand why the image of Armenia could suffer after the recent events.
What are the specific scenes and events that could change the imagination of the Europeans about Armenia and the situation in Armenia? We wander why ordinary European citizens would think that Armenia is not the country they had thought about. Were the Europeans shocked by the films of the post-election events posted in the YouTube web page? Were they shocked because of the fact that those clashes were massive or took place not far from European Embassies? To be frankly it is hard for Europeans to understand that.
Everyone knows that those events were really shocking. However, we should also understand that those events were an objective result of a situation developed in Armenia during many years. That situation seemed to be quiet, but indeed it was collecting very dangerous energy, which usually explodes at one point in the future. We will speak about this later…
Recently there was a debate between young loyalists of communistic and liberal values. In fact the result of that debate had been decided in advance because the communistic system formed a certain system of values but the liberalism has not formed any systems of values during its long life though. When the system of the society’s values is falling, soon or later it brings to a catastrophe. We have “succeeded” in annihilating the small wealth we inherited from our past but failed to create a new one. We were against elections with one candidate, but accepted the system of bribed voters and falsified elections. We refused the institute of the soviet wheeler-dealers who were educated, but are not doing anything against the institute of stupid oligarchs (in this case using the word “institute” is an action equal to crime because it is not even worth). We have been struggling against leaders who are not intellectual at all, but ultimately we have leaders like that now.
In other words, we broke down the soviet system of values, but offered the citizens of the country to take care of themselves as they can. Could the reality be forgotten so fast? No, it doesn’t happen. Energy cannot be lost; it can be converted to other forms, but never can be lost. How can this energy be performed and used? What can be done with the energy, which the voters of our country have collected during many years and many elections when they understood that they are not voters but just names written on papers (or some numbers on a social security card enabling others to manipulate them)? What can be done with the energy of citizens who have been living in very difficult conditions and did not know what to do to survive till the end of the month with five thousand dram in their pockets? What can be done with the energy that made teachers take money from their pupils because they did not get money from the state? We should confess that all this energy would explode one day. It is a normal process. You can take history books and see that such things are never forgotten and forgiven. I don’t know who will punish but I am sure that such things cannot be forgiven.
Now let’s see what the Europeans do in such case. I have always been interested in knowing why the Euro Union allowed Armenia to join it. I have tried to find answers to that question but couldn’t. What are those values? Maybe our most important value is our achievements in democracy and ability of organizing democratic and very fair elections? It turns out that the Europeans monitors have spent their mission not in polling stations to observe elections but in restaurants (it seems to be close to the reality). Or maybe human rights are protected very well in Armenia? It is very funny because most of the violated human rights are the rights of those people who have European way of thinking. We can continue with such questions, but we should confess that Armenia has become a member of the Euro Union for certain geopolitical reasons only. It had to happen, thus it happened.
In fact Europe saw the problems that had been collected and were being collected in Armenia. The Europeans understood it very well that the elections were not conducted in compliance with democratic principles at all. The Europeans also know that there are problems with independent speech in Armenia. They knew it very well that in Armenia there were problems with human rights and first of all the ombudsman had many problems with human rights protection. Generally the Europeans saw and understood everything very well. It means that there were ready for possible explosion of that huge energy, even more they were ready for that also due to the fact that after each cycle of elections they said that the elections were a step toward democracy while those elections were a step toward a tragedy but not democracy. After each cycle of elections there were rumors that Armenia might lose its mandate with the PACE, but indeed it never happened. Before each cycle of elections the oppositionists were screaming that Europe would not forgive us any more, but Europe was very kind to us. It turns out that besides spending time in restaurants during election monitoring missions Europeans are interested in Armenia only in case when there is blood in streets. Their kind heart can not stay indifferent to the horrible videos in the YouTube. Ultimately the problem is that some drops of that blood are also a result of indifference on part of Europe, the wonderful PACE building in Strasbourg.