RAT BEGOT OSTRICH
Hakob Badalyan

Lragir.am
12 May 06

The developments connected with the Orinats Yerkir Party appeared as
a peculiar indicator of the political sphere in Armenia and revealed
a number of realities of the environment inside the government,
or confirmed these realities. It is extremely interesting that the
branches of power failed to give an assessment of the rats abandoning
the ship of Orinats Yerkir; a simple assessment is meant. Instead,
everyone hurried to deny having any connection with and pushing the
abandoners. It turns out that the businessmen came out of the party on
purely ideological dissent. In the meantime, the OYP does not seem to
have modified its ideology. Arthur Baghdasaryan’s statement on pursuing
membership to NATO and EU would hardly have aroused an ideological riot
among businessmen members of the party, considering that NATO and the
EU are presently the most attractive partners, and their members are
economically the most developed countries in the world. In other words,
economically, this ideology should have attracted and not repelled
a businessman. For the disagreement between Arthur Baghdasaryan
and former Orinats Yerkir members on the privatization policies,
it cannot be ideological because the problem of lawfulness of the
sell-off was considered rather than the problem of privatizing or not
privatizing. And for a businessman, lawful privatization should be
an implicit and prime issue because a businessman is not protected
unless there is lawful economic competition.

It is unambiguous that the businessmen who left Orinats Yerkir did not
have any reason for ideological dissent. And if the branches of power
are putting forward instead of the businessmen suggestions involving
ideology, this looks like an attempt of misleading the “investigation”
rather. And in similar cases it is beyond suspect that they made
this attempt in an effort to hide the main reason, which actually
does not need a proof. Why are the government afraid of confessing
that they lead the offensive against the Orinats Yerkir? Whereas,
one tends to think that even a rivalry should have started within
the government to show off their power of emptying factions with a
single blow. Who do they fear? The Orinats Yerkir?

Probably not, because otherwise they would not have launched the
offensive.

However, nonetheless, declining laurels could have been caused by
a feeling of fear and responsibility. And the problem is not the
Orinats Yerkir at all. It is neither the first nor the last political
party, which will experience the whole glamor and wretchedness of
rats abandoning the ship. This very consciousness frightens the
government, and makes them keep silent or shift the problem to an
ideological plane. Nobody wants to assume responsibility for rats
abandoning the ship, acknowledging that with every dissolving
party the so-called political system is coming apart, if it
exists in Armenia at all. And the responsibility for dismantling
a political system is much greater, for here the country’s future,
and consequently the future of generations is concerned. Besides,
when a political system is coming apart, its fragments may fly to
anywhere and cause pain to anyone, independent of what this force
is, ideological or opportunistic. Therefore, everyone is afraid of
giving proper names to things, supposing that by giving a name to
a thing it acquires corresponding contents. This is the reason why
the society is constantly hearing expressions about economic growth,
stability and the like, but does not see any real changes.

The political forces of Armenia look like an ostrich, not because
they are fast or tall. Simply they tend to think like this naive
bird that there is no danger unless you see it. If they describe the
reason why rats abandon the ship as ideological, it stops being a
threat against the political system, and one becomes “ideologically”
protected. Whereas everyone seems to agree that the Orinats Yerkir is
not the first and the last, which means that all the political forces
of Armenia are not protected, even though training rats is considered
a political ideology, and keeping silent about it is referred to as
a virtue.