Armenians tired of Karabakh conflict
By Abdul Kerimkhanov
The prolongation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict negatively affects the well-being of the Armenian people. The country is rapidly losing its population, young-age guys tend to migrate in order to avoid service in Karabakh, the economy plunges into recession, from which even the light at the end of the tunnel is not visible.
All of the above phenomena are a consequence of the continuation of Armenia’s occupation policy and the country’s new leadership has no other option but to facilitate the early resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan.
From April 30 to May 9, Gallup International Association in Armenia conducted a social inquiry in this country. Director of the organization Aram Navasardyan presented the results to the journalists on May 22.
According to the results, among the most important problems of the state, as many as 45 percent of respondents named unemployment, 40 percent - the economic situation, low wages and pensions - 26.8 percent.
It is noteworthy that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as the main problem of Armenia gained only 26.1 percent of the votes. This suggests that the social and economic situation in the country is so bad that people are no longer interested in this conflict. In addition, the Armenian citizens do not realize that the main reason for all the main problems they mentioned is the existence of the conflict with Azerbaijan and its non-settlement.
Besides, voting results showed that only 11 percent of the responded assessed the economic situation in the country good, while another 54.5 percent consider it average, and about 33.4 percent believe that everything in Armenia is bad or very bad.
Armenian citizens also noted such problems as immigration, the bad situation in health, education, corruption, foreign policy problems, rising prices, inflation, poverty, etc.
The results also clarified that the number of people supporting the activities of the Nikol Pashinyan’s government decreased by 13.3 percent compared to September 2018.
Navasardyan believes that the reason for the fall of Pashinyan's support is due to the fact that the euphoria has subsided. As another reason, the expert considers higher demands on the government, which was formed by Pashinyan’s team.
Although Navasardian is trying to maintain optimism, the reality is rather pessimistic. Public support for Nikol Pashinyan in the number of concrete supporters was well demonstrated recently, during the blocking of the buildings of the courts by the PM’s call.
In 2018, during the velvet revolution, Pashinyan brought 500,000-600,000 people to the square, and only 1,100 people could gather to block the courts in May 2019. Thus, the results are evident in one year.
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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94
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