“Chorrord Ishkhanutyun” says that local elections held in Armenia over the weekend will have little bearing on next year’s parliamentary elections. “These are completely different processes,” argues the paper. “Everything will be completely different in the forthcoming parliamentary elections: their goals, voters’ motivation, the importance of the outcome, and the rules of the game. We will see a totally different picture in small communities because it’s one thing when people elect a village mayor who can get along with the criminal authorities and it’s another thing when people make a choice from among political forces with the aim of changing the criminal authorities.”
“It is normal that Armenia’s citizens dislike their government,” writes “Aravot.” “The government does not deserve to be loved. And not just in Armenia. The trouble is that our feelings towards the authorities extend to everything else in Armenia, including phenomena such as nature and weather that have absolutely nothing to do with the authorities. Because of their hatred of the authorities, people do not want to understand that it’s their rivers, their city, their police station, their army, their tanks, their artillery, their Iskander missiles, their military parade, their independence day.”
In this regard, the paper points to a storm of complaints caused by recent days’ rehearsals of a military parade that will take place in Yerevan on Wednesday. “Many motorists were stuck in [resulting] traffic jams for hours,” it says. “But the fact that they made this temporary inconvenience the sole and main subject of conversations testifies to an unhealthy state of people’s minds. People forget for what event that parade is organized. They can’t enjoy a holiday that has nothing to do with the former, present and future governments.”
“Zhoghovurd” says that Wednesday’s military parade will certainly be “much more spectacular and powerful” than past demonstrations of Armenia’s military might. “We, Armenia’s citizens, just need to get rid of our excessive skepticism … and pride ourselves in having a free and independent fatherland,” the paper says.
(Anush Mkrtchian)