In Armenia the discussions about the role and position of the intelligentsia, more specifically the absence of their role, is becoming more vocal during the pre-election period. During that period, the ones, who consider themselves, show their actual faces by proving that content-wise there are no different skinheads. Yesterday with his behavior the director of Yerevan’s camera theater Ara Yernjakyan proved that he deserves to occupy an honorable place on the party list of the ruling party. During the protest against construction taking place near Margaryan hospital in Mashtots park, Yernjakyan, who is also a member of the city council of Yerevan, approached the environmental activists escorted by the police and announced that the protest is illegal. “Today you are trying to do exactly what your colleague Meruzhan Ter-Gulanyan was trying to do in Kajaran village. You are trying to defend the illegal activities of the government. Here illegal construction is taking place. Under what title are you here for?” asked Yernjakyan a member of the Heritage faction Zaruhi Postanjyan, who was also protesting against the construction. As a response, Yernjakyan said that he was there for the sake of the law. Then the latter, who considers himself a “real Yerevan citizen,” named the participants of the protest “varmints” and left. As a rule, in cases like that it is common to blame the government for spoiling and corrupting the intelligentsia. But for the sake of justice we should mention that the government is no guilty. We are sure that nobody, including the ones he serves for, asked Yernjakyan to go to the protesters and degrade to such a level. More simply, Yernjakyan probably thought that this is a good occasion “to sell him to the government at a decent price.” Let the intelligentsia not be for sale and the government won’t have the chance to buy them. So we shouldn’t be surprised if at some point Yernjakyan receives an apartment in the area, where construction was taking place. In reality, the real Yerevan citizens are the ones, who were struggling against the police till last evening yesterday by not allowing them to continue the construction.
