Western democracy and Armenian pop stars

My pre-election thoughts (part 2)


Western democracy

I was following the results of French elections last night, and although some of my French friends are very critical of Sarkozy and accused him in controlling media and being authoritarian, you could feel the pulse of democracy there, you could feel that people’s vote counts. On the other hand, even Britain gets hit by voting chaos and irregularities, but this is a separate story.

***
The other day I was looking at this picture from 168 Hours.

The accompanying comment was that on surface, Armenian electorate campaign started resembling western one, but it’s only on surface, and what we lack is resemblance in substance. Cannot agree with it more!

Armenian pop stars

By the way, French also use their pop stars in election campaigns (and not only French, it’s everywhere), so it’s not something specific Armenian, and we probably need to get used of these facts. In fact, among others, I spotted Mireille Mathieu singing in support of Sarkozy’s victory.

Now back to Armenian reality. Truly said, my first reaction at looking at this collage from 168 Hours was: “Armenian hall of shame”?

But then… my problem with this is not the fact that our singers ‘support’ some political parties (well, mainly pro-governmental) and want to rally in their support either ‘free of charge’, for a fee or in return of favours. My problem is that we never see these Armenian pop or other stars (‘celebrities’) to stand out against human rights violations, social injustice, in support of democracy and so on. I wonder:

When will we see Armenian ‘Rostropovichs’?