Can the actions of one person spark a movement for great change? Ghandi? What about Castro? Mao? Lenin? Well, the story in Armenia is relatively small stuff and Nikol Pashinyan doesn't seem to be driven by ideologies. He went from zero to 80 in about 2 months so the faster the rise the faster the fall after he walked across a section of Armenia.
This is a powerful story, even if it ends up badly - and it well might, given that one person led movement are subject to the person being corrupted - or assassinated - or besmirched. And of course we don't know what we don't know yet. When he was young he stood up, often alone. His hot headedness turned people off. But he kept learning. A story worth watching.
He Was a Protester a Month Ago. Now, Nikol Pashinyan Leads Armenia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/.../armenia-nikol-pashinyan-prime-minister.html
2 days ago - After being selected as interim prime minister, he said his first priority was to organize the first fair parliamentary elections in many years.CreditAnush Babajanyan for The New York Times. By Neil MacFarquhar. May 8, 2018. YEREVAN, Armenia — Nikol Pashinyan, who led the nonviolent protest movement ...
YEREVAN, Armenia — Nikol Pashinyan, who led the nonviolent protest movement that improbably toppled the government of Armenia, had just ended a brief interview and headed into another room when he whirled around.
“Would you like to eat?” he asked, beckoning to a table scattered with plastic cartons holding takeout pork kebabs wrapped in paperlike bread, as well as tomato and cucumber salad. “This kind of lunch is the usual for us for the past month; we have not gotten back to civilized ways.”
If whirlwind events of the past month are any guide, Armenia might never get back to its old ways, civilized or not. On Tuesday, Mr. Pashinyan became Armenia’s interim prime minister, when a Parliament dominated by his political foes elected him by a 59-to-42 vote.
After vowing to remake the country’s political and economic systems, Mr. Pashinyan told a cheering throng in the central Republic Square in Yerevan, the capital, that, “Your victory is not that I was elected as prime minister of Armenia; your victory is that you decided who should be prime minister of Armenia.”
Thanks for Gandhi, anyway. I trust your mind drifted to Mao, Castro, and Lenin as exemplars of the kind of change makers we should avoid.
ReplyDeleteMao, Lenin? Mass fucking murderers. See the problem here guys?
ReplyDelete