By Rashid Shirinov
Nowadays, many in Armenia wonder when the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will end his revolutionary show and begin the real implementation of the promises he made during the “velvet revolution” this April.
The exhausted population of Armenia already does its utmost in order to show the prime minister that people can wait no longer. On August 9, a man who has been unemployed over the past two years and is unable to feed his family, resorted to self-harm in the center of Yerevan. In the hope of attracting the attention of the new authorities, he nailed his feet to a bench in a park.
A month ago, on July 10, another Armenian citizen doused himself with gasoline near the residence of Pashinyan and tried to commit self-immolation.
It is obvious that these people and almost 3 million of Armenia’s population are not interested in the corruption exposures and other similar activities that Pashinyan has set as his main goal at the moment. It is much more important for Armenian citizens to know when their own problems will be solved and whether they will have the opportunity to feed their families tomorrow.
However, Pashinyan’s government still fails to work in this direction. The prime minister spends all his energy on vendetta with the former authorities of Armenia. The new government has not yet proposed any effective economic programs, neither has it developed a strategy for pulling the country out of the impasse.
Meanwhile, Pashinyan’s team is well aware of the negative mood of the public. Armenian media have found out that the prime minister is concerned about his popularity among Armenia residents and believes that the meeting with Armenia's population that he scheduled for August 17 may not be as large-scale as he would like it to be.
On the one hand, Pashinyan wants to check how loyal the crowds remained to him, and on the other hand, he fears shame. Therefore, the prime minister's team has decided to ensure a crowded rally at all costs. Armenian media note that all offices of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party began to actively engage in preparatory work in order to attract as many people as possible.
Thus, Pashinyan’s team now has an important task – to ensure that its chief does not fail at the meeting on August 17. If the prime minister continues to waste all energy on fighting the former authorities and continues to ignore the problems of the ordinary population, the day when Armenians will start to hate their new leader will not be far off.