RECURRENT PRESENTATION OF BREAD AND CIRCUSES

The summer Olympic Games in Beijing was perhaps the most successful for Armenia since independence. Although our sportsmen who performed under the Armenian tricolor won a higher Olympic prize in Atlanta in 1996 where Armenia participated as an independent country for the first time, in terms of quantity Beijing was unprecedented, especially after the single bronze in Sydney and the total failure in the Olympic Games in Athens. Therefore, the Armenian sportsmen deserved the event of praise which despite the slogans and cheers in the Soviet spirit, was worthily held at the Republic Square. I did not go to the Republic Square and I do not know what the atmosphere there was like and what was going on in reality. I tracked the event through TV reports. And from those TV reports it became clear to me that the praise of the sportsmen was just an opportunity to praise Serge Sargsyan. The heroes of the TV reports were not the sportsmen or at least the president of the National Olympic Committee Gagik Tsarukyan but Serge Sargsyan who delivered almost a policy speech in the best pre-election tradition. In this context, even the posters and slogans which cheered the sportsmen were in reality for another purpose, again part the chain of the best pre-election traditions when entire staffs were brought to listen to the speeches of Serge Sargsyan under the recording of cheers. And it was already difficult to understand whether the staffs who gathered to cheer the Armenian Olympic team and the winners had wished to come or had been forced to come to listen to Serge Sargsyan who addressed them from the stage. And for what had the sportsmen been brought? Were they brought to stand and make the background for the president address? The obsession of the government to use everything for propaganda once again appeared in its full glamour and misery. Once again the government misappropriated the subject of popular joy, like another facility, premise or company, again leaving people to perform the static role of applauding. What did the government want to convey? That if Serge Sargsyan had not gone to Beijing, the number of the bronze medals would be five, four, three or two instead of six? Maybe one? Or maybe there would be no medals at all? Does the government’s mind understand that by using everything, including the Olympic success for solving its problems with the society the government humiliates the sportsmen who won the victory? If the sportsmen are praised, the president should perhaps generously become a background for them, stand behind their back, like he stood in Beijing, if we believe his speech and the impressions of the sportsmen which were reported on TV. Why did Serge Sargsyan who kept behind them in Beijing stand in front of them in Yerevan? It allows thinking that Serge Sargsyan had gone to Beijing for that far-reaching purpose rather than for encouraging the sportsmen. Why did Serge Sargsyan, who spoke about the uniting power of sports, the pan-Armenian spirit, victories of the people, not cheer our team among the people, leaving the stage to the sportsmen and their coaches? Perhaps the government propaganda machine has not thought about these things. But when will it finally think? When will the logic of the Armenian government finally rid of the Soviet psychology and realize that the formula of bread and circuses was viable in ancient Rome but not in the 21st century? Did Tigran Sargsyan not prompt his senior and junior colleagues that in the 21st century the world develops fast, technology changes fast, time and space shrink dynamically, and it is impossible to feed only bread and circuses to people, especially that Armenia is far smaller than the world which is growing smaller, and everyone is aware of the cost of that bread and circus. JAMES HAKOBYAN

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