AZG Armenian Daily #065, 05/04/2008
National Interests
ARMENIA IN IDEOLOGY CRISIS
After the tragedy of March 1 Armenia faced a
political, ideological and moral crisis. And if the
incident was settled from the political point of view,
the ideological and moral consequences proved harder
to be removed. It is obvious that because of the
confrontation of the new and the old authorities of
Armenia suffered the Armenian people and the statehood
itself. And the matter is not the international
prestige of our republic, but rather in the danger of
ruining our statehood.
We do not think that such attitude to the problem is
exaggerated. Each country is strong with a nation,
with a society, which is eager to establish a strong
statehood. On March 1 everybody could see than no such
society is present in Armenia nowadays. In 17 years we
failed to develop an ideology, which would put the
national interests above anything else.
One thing is clear: such situation is caused by lack
of confidence, ideology and real political field in
Armenia.
For years we have been working only to imitate
national statehood. If the previous authorities
considered national statehood a fictive category, the
present ones do not observe it at all, in any ways. We
were trying to build a statehood without its face and
ideology. Its political model was taken from the West,
its values were taken from the West, even the
political parties were trying to fit the Western
standards, and no one cared that the Republic of
Armenia must have something unique, something very
special for the Armenian nation.
For years we have formed a cosmopolite mass without
any principles, which we used to call "population".
Because of this anyone, who suggested any idea, even
though that idea was destructive and ruinous, became
able to collect the masses, and the mob followed that
person.
The very first people to make use of that atmosphere
were the very same authorities who established the
immoral statehood. In 1998 new powers came to rule
Armenia, and they were indifferent towards any
national issue. An army of criminals came into power
instead of a bunch of immoral, cosmopolite
intellectuals. From their predecessors they inherited
the immorality, the corruption structure and improved
it.
Healthy society would condemn such rulers and cast
them down. Instead we saw that the political and
intellectual elite was so poor with ideas, that
suggested nothing against the destruction of our own
nation, and the authorities proved so mentally weak
that did not manage to invent anything to replace
their destructive policy.
In order to prevent the repetition of March 1 tragedy,
we need political ideas and poltical figures of a new
level. We need politicians who do not consider
politics just a dirty game, but we need people who
would work to improve the society with political
measures.
We could only add that the powers, which initiated the
clash between the two parts of the Armenian people,
cannot suggest any constructive ideas for saving the
nation.
By A. Manvelian, translated by A.M.