Today the situation is quite different. The term “PR” has become one of the stylish terms and it is widely used. It is not even translated into Armenian, but is just spelled as it is and claims to become one the Armenian literary words, unless some super-talented linguists translate it, as they did with many foreign words. Moreover, very often there are words which are translated in such an artificial way that are simply incomprehensible for people. Anyways, PR is quite easy and simple. Leaving aside linguistics, let us turn to the PR itself. Parallel to this term, another profession was also invented as well. It is one of the most popular professions, which is used to be called as “PR-maker.” PR-makers (or people calling themselves PR-makers) started to grow and develop in Armenia. Recently one of the professionals said that today every second person in the country is a PR-maker. Whoever is an ad manager or just a spokesperson considers himself as professional PR-maker. They even get offended when somebody calls them a bad PR-maker, or not a PR-maker at all. This is simply extremeness. There is also an opposite side to this, when PR-making is taken as an offence. The thing is not about the “black PR” at all, but to the real positive PR. It is particularly referred to the political field, when somebody takes an initiative, and is commented as if he or she is just doing a PR on somebody or something. In response to this the same person blames on his/her opponent with same reproach of a PR-maker. That is to say, in political field everybody blames each other on making PR. Of course authorities are the first party to blame others on PR-making. When the government acts with a seemingly positive initiative, this means that it is just a PR making. For instance, on Thursday the government made a decision about common certificates taken from the cadastre. In nearest future people will not have to go to cadastre for getting those certificates, but it would be possible to have them online. However, when you consider that people where not concerned about going or not going to cadastre, but worry about the huge amounts to be paid for this reference, you come to realize that the role of the PR was much bigger in this issue. PR comes also in case of free economic initiatives. Same is with supermarket monitoring. This time the authorities were blaming not on the opposition, but on the big business for PR-making. Yesterday Vahan Kerobyan, managing director of Star Divide trade network, said in his press-conference: ”the suggested changes in the legislation of trade and service are rather a PR, than real changes. Around 50 thousand consumers visit Star supermarkets countrywide, as well as they visit Yerevan City supermarkets. Naturally large trade networks are under people’s attention, and any tension directed to us may be observed as a real PR.” It is not excluded either that the authors of the law change later on comment on Kerobyan’s words as redirecting the PR towards them. Authorities do not keep idle as well. The police is arresting a journalist, the editor in chief of the same journalist calls for a press-conference and is blamed in using the fact of arrest as a PR. Moreover, the most ridiculous thing is when not only people from different political field blame each other on PR making, but also representatives from one and the same sphere do the same towards each other. For example, when the Prosperous Armenia didn’t participate in the voting for new legislation of reducing cash transactions, Galust Sahakyan from the ruling RPA blamed this political party in making PR three months before the parliamentary elections. And according to him that was not a successful PR. Of course nobody can say whether that was a PR or not, but whatever it was, it was not bad organized at all. The same PR ‘”blame-storming” is common to the opposition which stands on the other side of the barricades. The ARF, for instance, always calls every announcement or initiative expressed the government as a real PR. This case is somehow natural, as the ARF has long been a member of coalition, and the new role of an opposition does not seem persuasive to many of its members. A real PR war is going on between the party Heritage and the ANC. From time to time this war becomes attacking, as it happened in the period of Raffi Hovhannisian’s fasting. In the inner political field the Legal State seemingly stays far from RP because perhaps of the reason that in 2008 this party has worn out all of its PR resources and currently nobody sees the point of conducting PR. It means that the Legal State already has its stable place and image in the political field and further PR will hardly save the image of the party. The PR techniques of the Armenian origin are not only circulated in Armenia. For example, a big portion of that was addressed to the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his team, according to which the French President had initiated the bill of refusing the genocide because of PR purposes. Shortly said, it seems that in Armenia there is a plague of PR, which threatens to reach alerting size on the eve of elections. It seems that if by the use of some innovative technologies the word “PR” is deleted from the brains of Armenian politicians, their message to the society will also be gone. In this light suddenly the National Statistics Service of Armenia publicizes the preliminary results of the census conducted in 2011. It turns out that the operative index of the population present in Armenia amounted to 2,871,509. According to the results of the census 2001, this index amounted to 3,002,598. It means that even the official statistics confess that during the last 10 years the population was cut by 131 thousand. The real PR is this number. More accurately we should call it “anti-PR,” which shows that the people don’t trust their country. They trust neither the government (they don’t expect anything positive) nor the opposition (they almost don’t believe to the chances of the latter to come to power).
