It is really impossible to look for and find a reason why the government should establish a Public council. The media has covered this issue and numerously reported that there is no logical explanation why to establish such council, thus people don’t like the idea of informing the president about their problems or moods through such filter. However, the society’s opinion was ignored this time too.
Generally one can understand and see the real problems of the society with his/her own eyes, as well as it is possible to see in the media. Even though media reports are construed in a specific manner, it is still possible to make a clear picture of what is happening in the country. Even more, the situation in the country can be clearly seen even from the window of the president’s car.
In any publication of this newspaper journalist Lusine Stepanyan writes about very important social problems in the society and people who have been rejected by the society and hardly anyone from the president’s office or the mentioned council may ever wish to meet with. What is the barrier? Why can’t they get unbiased information from the mentioned sources? Because they don’t want. Accordingly, the Public council is for ignoring the reality and escaping from direct contact with the social problems of the society. The mentioned public council is to be a link between the top authorities and the society.
Maybe the public council will be in charge of bigger and more important problems. Hardly may it handle bigger issues because the staff of the council does not have a magic eye and none of them has spoken about the decision to demolish the barrier between the society and government. Maybe this council is established for the purpose of mixing the private opinions with the common one in order to show, for example, why each of them has not been for granting amnesty to political prisoners and now they can do it together. By the way, MP Viktor Dallakyan says this is the reason why the council is established. Seemingly such council may suggest to the president and make him issue a decision to grant amnesty to the political prisoners. In other words it is more than one year that the society, politicians, bright representatives of the intelligentsia, officials and even former foreign affairs minister Vardan Oskanyan say that the government should grant amnesty to political prisoners, and now the authorities want to demonstrate one more fake play of the judicial system. The members of the public council believe that if they ask to grant amnesty, the authorities will respect their opinion. Will they grant amnesty in one year when the health conditions of the political prisoners are very bad and there is no credibility in the society to the state system? Any citizen who knows about the judicial proceedings resulted from the events of March 1 should have felt sorry for this and tried to prevent this fake play. Even if the government grants amnesty, hardly it will be construed as due to the pubic council’s efforts. After the recent rally of the opposition and Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s speech the deputy head of the Republic party announced that he did not exclude the possibility of granting amnesty to the oppositionists in consideration of the mild speech of the opposition leader. However we think that the reason is the fact that Armenia’s reputation may suffer again during the upcoming PACE report in Valencia on March 31.
In other words, it is not so much convincing to convene a group of respected or unknown people and make an impression that the truth is spoken with their words, especially in this age of information when anyone can find any information. Most of the people involved in the Public council are famous people and their word makes sense in the society, thus they can make their words heard without any civic responsibilities too.
In a word, if the members of the Public council take the role of the real connecting link between the society and authorities, they would care about the real problems of people and would have refused to be involved in the council. On the other hand, if the most important thing to them is the president’s suggestion, which they could not refuse, it means that they are not to serve a link between the society and authorities but persons and the president. As people from Odessa say, these are too very different things.