On TV they often show reports how people become members of the ruling Republican party and Prosperous Armenia (they either don’t show the ones, who become Legal State members or perhaps there are no such left in Armenia anymore). Normally, the ceremony of becoming RPA members takes place in cultural centers of villages – in the village clubs. People with worn-out suits don’t mind acquiring RPA tickets. In their opinion, that is a piece of paper similar to indulgence. For the new RPA recruits the future seems bright too. The fortunes of Menua Harutyunyan, Edward Sharmazanov, Karen Avagyan inspire with hope that someday they will also be happy. Members of Prosperous Armenia are recruited in big halls. And there are many, who desire to be recruited. If for a moment it is understandable that old or mid-age people are recruited party members, in the case of young girls, who just got out of the hairdresser’s is not very clear. Moreover, there are hundreds of such young men and women. They take the party tickets and congratulate each other with champagne glasses, thank the leader of the Prosperous Armenia in front of cameras, who it turns out they link their very last hope with. But it is a big luck that we also have other young people. You might have really seen them in Mashtots park. These young men are not party affiliated. The uniqueness of this movement is that anyone, who stands next to them for awhile, become non-partisan for the given time and are automatically turned into Yerevan residents. This is the justification why the movement united so many people and had so many supporters. I personally know many of those young men. They are young men, who received their degrees abroad, are great specialists and intelligent people. They know several languages but are not too surprised about this fact. They communicate with each other in pure and literate Armenian. Good education and high consciousness give them liberty in their thoughts and actions. They don’t look affrightedly at Serzh Sargsyan or Gagik Tsarukyan before saying something. They are resolutely indifferent to Tsarukyan’s fortune and Sargsyan’s power leverages. If political elite is concerned about the future of the country they should do their best not to break the will of these young people. They should do their best not to disappoint the young people who try to protect the Mashtots park. In other words they should cease to act like they are the owners of this country. However they announce that these young people who protest to protect Teghut forest and the Mashtots park are defended by external powers. These young people are labeled. But Armenia needs people like this. And it will be disastrous to lose them. In 1988, the students conducting sitting strike at the Liberty square were authorities for pupils at schools. It was a bright generation. They were in the front line of the movement. They had idols. Where are they now? What happened to them? Some of them fell victims in Artsakh. After the war they were broken morally. A lot of young people who survived the war, could not receive education and find their place, today live in villages in need and negligence. Dexterous ones had different destiny. There was a huge gap between their expectations and the reality. The climax of the moral gap was Nairi Hunanyan, who entered the Parliament with a rifle and assassinated beheaded the government. One of the pivotal figures of that generation was Tigran Naghdalyan. He was murdered later. Others, whose names are not pronounced loudly, occupied offices in the state machine. And what do the oligarchs and state officials, who fell in the category of the so-called “others” in 1988, do now? They try to make everybody become party member profiting from poor social status and ignorance of people. The level of liberty of RPA or PAP is not difficult to define: “As the state President Serzh Sargsyan states” or “Only our leader Gagik Tsarukyan is authorized to speak about that.” As part members, young people get involved in electoral violations directly or indirectly, their right of freedom becomes limited. Young people who do not have any job, are waiting for the elections. It is a temporary activity for them. They offer their services to the leading parties. They are viewed as small, instruments by the political elite, tools deserving little respect which are forgotten after being used. Being young means being free, maximalist, independent, courageous. Go to the Mashtots park. Young people gathered there are like that. To our joy they say we are the owners of this city and this country.
