HY RU EN
Asset 3

Loading

End of content No more pages to load

Your search did not match any articles

Edik Baghdasaryan

Our Choice: Singing the Lament of the Lost Fatherland

No one is any longer amazed to read stories about Armenian officials abusing their government posts.

You can no longer shock anyone by writing that this or that person has spent $500,000 to buy a seat in the National Assembly. It comes as no surprise to anyone if you prove that the real owner of a commercial enterprise is actually a government official. It’s become the “norm” and has entered the Armenian genetic code.

Many can argue that this is the way it has always been, or that the same situation reigns throughout the world. And there’s not much in the way of response you can tell such people. Such effort is pointless. Armenians aren’t capable of creating their world. Here, naturally, we are not referring to the “Armenian world” as posited by Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan. What’s actually going on with Armenians today?

The myth of the Armenian no longer holds water; it has long since turned to dust. Armenians are destroying their own country, its natural environment. They destroy and then flee the country. Sometimes, it seems that all this is part of a conspiracy drafted in some unknown place. Such thoughts are fleeting, since there is no conspiracy at work. There is no need for one.

Armenia is being emptied. Armenians are fleeing from their country. And this doesn’t seem to be of any concern to the authorities in charge. They are only concerned with one thing – holding on to power and accumulating more wealth. Their souls are money-driven. Like curses uttered, depopulated villages are blocked up in the country’s throat and no government can digest such a reality. Neglected old folk drag their frail bodies through the dusty streets of ghost towns.

They cry out for their departed children in parental longing and curse this country for their present plight. It’s a simple fact. This continuing chain of injustice and lawlessness has a price – an Armenia being emptied of its people. In the midst of this crippling widespread poverty, the price paid for the parties and nightly fireworks, the expensive jeeps, the huge mansions built with monies ripped off from the taxpayer and a billionaire Robert Kocharyan, has been an Armenia being emptied of Armenians.

There’s a ghostly specter haunting Armenia; the ghost of a dispossessed people. People still have faith in one another when it comes to daily matters of life. But broach the subject of this or that government agency and that faith turns to unbelief. How did we get here, how did we push the country to such an abyss? We have even screwed up the army to the point of collapse and have made life a living hell for that eighteen year-old facing the enemy on the frontline.

Every Armenian once held the national army as an institution to be revered and above reproach. Now look at it. All the apparatuses of the state and the political parties have a hand in the process of emptying Armenia. Not one of them ever says – Hold on a minute, we can’t go on living like this.

Our type of Armenian is not capable of building a country. Armenians like us only sing one song- the song of a lost fatherland. It’s a sad song that demands no work in return. It was written a long time ago. We, it seems, have made our choice and have broken down, singing the song of the lost fatherland. Over the years we have wasted it all, every square inch of independence we won.

Step by step, minute by minute we caved in without resisting and swallowed one injustice after another. This giant wheel is now rolling over us all; crushing each of us under its weight. It should come as no surprise that we are now standing on the precipice. Who can honestly say that we don’t deserve to be where we are today?

Photo –Max Sivaslian 

Write a comment

If you found a typo you can notify us by selecting the text area and pressing CTRL+Enter