2 December 2006

Defense Minister Serge Sargsian heard thousands of praise words addressed to the project of the strategy of national security. For example, NA chairman Tigran Torosian was sure that the strategy of national security was the most important document after Constitution. And the former director of NAS Institute of Oriental Studies Nikolay Hovhannisian declared that we all must be proud that we belonged to the generation, which had a chance to adopt that conception.

THE MAIN SIN

It is possible that the publication of the major part of newspapers /including “Aravot”/ will be stopped from December 7: a gale passes over Black Sea, Ilyichovsk-Poti ferries aren’t ferried, media paper isn’t imported, and paper has been finished in “Tigran Mets” publication. If such thing happens, it will be a great blow to our business; we’ll be deprived of some advertisements as well as incomes from the newspaper’s publication.

I don’t suffer from paranoia and don’t intend to accuse the government as if it prevents the import of paper to make pressure on free press. We shouldn’t see policy everywhere. In favor of justice we must mention that a lot of pro-authority newspapers are also published in “Tigran Mets” and very oppositionist versions are printed in “Gind”.

I see the policy in other place, and in that case I not only accuse but also strongly condemn the authority. After the cease-fire signed in 1994, our authority didn’t manage to sign a peace with Azerbaijan and settle its relations with Turkey as the result of which a whole nation depends on the storm in Black Sea. Not having normal relations with our neighbors and keeping the country in the blockade is the only thing of which I accuse our authorities. The rest things: rigged elections, robbery, oligarchic system is additional sins but not the main one. In case of civil relations with the neighbors a modern civil and economic system will exist.

The representatives of our authority have ridden the horse of nationalism and consider them as a group of riders. Perhaps the people like their empty argumentations /do you want us to yield Turks? / The crowd hates the rulers of the country but for not the main sin but for the additional ones. Until the crowd becomes a society and demands to correct the main sin, the situation will remain the same. Nowadays paper is deficit, deficiency of fuel or wheat may exist tomorrow.

Aram Abrahamian