(Saturday, August 12)
“For the [Armenian] authorities, the population is a gray mass which should be bribed, bullied and suppressed during elections so that they can achieve their desired results,” writes “Aravot.” “The people then had better not disturb the authorities for the next four or five years. And they may not disturb. But that is not an ideal solution for the authorities because humiliated people are not inclined to work and create and may have a latent hatred towards those who humiliate them.”
Armen Badalian, a political commentator, tells Lragir.am that Armenia’s civil society must have a staunchly pro-Western orientation. “Russia has serious problems with civil society and you can’t build a civil society through integration into Russian integration structures,” he says.
Writing in Civilnet.am, a prominent journalist and columnist, Tatul Hakobian, looks at opposition calls for renaming street names in Yerevan that were named after controversial Armenian Bolshevik leaders. He brings the example of a village in Armenia’s Gegharkunik village that was named after one of those leaders in the 1920s, wondering whether it too should be given a new name.
(Sargis Harutyunyan)