It seems they/we want to change Armenia’s Constitution. Did you hear? Probably you would’ve heard. The press has been writing about it quite a lot recently. Probably it has to write a lot, since we’re talking about major structural changes of an entire country — quite incomprehensible and obscure changes, in fact.

But, in my personal, subjective opinion, neither supporters nor opponents write comprehensibly. As we know, it’s difficult for the average citizen to listen to lawyers for a long time when they speak legalese. After a few minutes, the average healthy citizen’s thinking organ stops working. This is normal.

Legal issues should be explained to the average citizen in more accessible language — just as a doctor must be able to explain an illness to the patient in language that doesn’t require three levels of post-secondary education. And so on and so on. 

But those in political science, politics, and, why not, news media, I think, are unable to initiate complete discussions among the public. Everything has turned into being either purely for or against. As to why Armenia is moving toward a parliamentary republic, whether it’s good or the opposite, a presidential system, is better — such conversations are absent from the public discourse. The main debate revolves around same-sex marriage, as if it or its rejection lies at the core of Armenian statehood. 

I’m sure that those who have a clear opinion on the constitutional amendments and a position in society, to put it mildly, won’t agree with me. But the problem is that the public has taken very little interest in the forthcoming amendments. 

Admit that if someone is interested in an issue, and in the Age of the Internet at that, he tries to seek opinions and information on his own. According to Google, local Armenians practically don’t search for these topics. 

According to Google, if the words “constitution” and “konstitutsiya” (the latter, in Russian, searched as “конституция”) are searched about a thousand times a month from Armenia (I assume, mostly those connected to foreign embassies or foreigners in Armenia do these searches, since the majority of the key words searched in tandem have nothing to do with Armenia), there are so few searches of the words “Constitution” and “constitutional” in Armenian (“Սահմանադրություն” and “սահմանադրական,” respectively) that Google simply cannot provide data. 

Searching “Конституция” and related words from Armenia
in Google’s search engine

Searching “Constitution” and “constitutional” (in Armenian) from Armenia:
Google has nothing to show us

People not only don’t search, but also don’t take an interest. In all likelihood, even serious discussions are not taking place. Let’s see, for instance, what’s happening on Twitter.

Are Twitter users discussing some points of the constitutional amendments? Let’s look at the use of the words “Constitution” and “constitutional” (again, in Armenian) in Twitter in the last month. The word “Constitution” was tweeted only 185 times in one month; the word “constitutional,” 534 times. 

Moreover, the overwhelming majority of these tweets were simply headlines of local online news media articles, which were automatically sent.

In order to understand the level of interest, let’s cite comparable examples from foreign policy: in one month, the word “Turkish” (“թուրքական” in Armenian) was used 321 times; the word “Azerbaijani” (“ադրբեջանական” in Armenian), 378 times. 

It’s probably worth changing something in the media industry so that the heated discussions on the constitutional amendments don’t begin after the referendum. 

Samvel Martirosyan

The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.