A NEED FOR PERMANENT CRISES

Haykakan Zhamanak
Nov 13 2008
Armenia

Maybe, many people ask themselves what Armenian Prime Minister
Tigran Sargsyan was doing during the past seven or eight months,
after taking the office. It is impossible to see any result of his
activities. However, one thing could be seen yesterday. For all this
time, day and night, the prime minister was mastering the art of
presenting the non-existing things as if they existed, and was doing
it without changing the look or the colour of his face. It is not an
easy thing to do.

He said at the National Assembly [parliament] yesterday that "the
moves made jointly by the cabinet and the Central Bank enabled Armenia
to withstand the first wave of the world financial crisis". What
moves? The thing is that the Central Bank or the cabinet have not
done anything, nothing. There have been no such moves. They were not
even speaking of the crisis. To realize this one needs to simply look
at the decisions passed by the cabinet and the prime minister in the
past couple of months, as well as the steps taken at the Central Bank,
and we will see that no measures were taken.

Sargsyan made a sensational statement at another place yesterday. "With
the world financial crisis, there is a good opportunity for Armenia
to show its advantages and to try to attract the funds of the CIS
population and businessmen," he said. So, the "Novyye Vasyuki"
[referring to Russian "Twelve chairs" novel by Ilf and Petrov]
plans of becoming a world financial, cultural and know-how centre
are "vanishing" and new horizons are now opening before us thanks to
the world financial crisis. All we needed was a crisis to show our
advantages, something that is impossible under regular conditions.

Now, it is clear what the "Armenian world" of Serzh and Tigran Sargsyan
was. This is a crisis plan, the core of which is to permanently cause
crises in the world to show our advantages. And if the entire world
is in Armenia’s position, we can show some advantages because we are
the authors of it and are very professional in it. But I am afraid
that the world, taking into account Armenia’s experience, would not
agree to be in permanent crises just to see Armenia’s advantages.