The meeting of President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev with representatives of more than 120 mass media outlets from 50 countries of the world was impossible to “miss”. The attention and the resonance were too strong. They did not have the sense and the restraint to keep silent and “swallow the pill”. First, Armenian “political strategists” issued a farcical “appeal of journalists of Nagorno-Karabakh”. Then, apparently, they realized that this “appeal” would be ignored by the world media community in the best case for its authors.
But now it turns out that the interaction of the Azerbaijani President with such a wide media audience, including the leading media of many countries, has seriously unnerved… Nikol Pashinyan. Moreover, the head of the Armenian government was shaken so much that he decided to immediately respond and talk to journalists as well.
But it seems that the “kebab varchapet” has not taken into account that envy is a bad feeling, and emotions are not the best adviser. According to Haykakan Zhamanak, the newspaper edited by Nikol Pashinyan’s wife Anna Hakobyan, Pashinyan will hold his “big press conference” on Tuesday, July 25. The plan is to invite representatives of 50 media outlets: to have 50 of something at least. Of course, there is 50 media outlets, including media of Armenia itself and Armenian publications in foreign countries like The California Courier (edited by Harut Sassounian) or Nouvelles d’Armenie in the US, and then there is 120 media outlets from 50 countries, including TRT World, TASS and Al-Jazeera.
But we will refrain from ironic quips whether Nikol Pashinyan understands the difference between “50 media outlets” and “120 media outlets from 50 countries”. We will not speculate whether Baghramyan 26 realizes that this difference in the invited audience is a true indicator of how much the interest of the world public and media community towards Azerbaijan is different from that towards Armenia. We will not rub salt into the wounds and wonder whether Nikol Pashinyan can gather the writing community in a place that can be compared to the global media forum in Shusha. It seems that Nikol Pashinyan is only now beginning to truly realize the price of his drunken dancing on Jidir Duzu. But we do wonder about something else. Pashinyan will have to go up to the microphone and not embarrass himself. The world media audience will have plenty of opportunities to compare the Azerbaijani President’s polished language and multilingual speech to Pashinyan’s ums, ahs, ers and stumbling over every phrase. Not to mention that the recent leader of the Yerevan “pogoses” will have to have something to say. That is, not to talk nonsense, not to try to turn everything upside down, and most importantly—the most difficult of all!—not to turn the whole media show into a demonstration of his own intransigence. Pashinyan has been unable to avoid this embarrassment so far, be it at press conferences or in parliament.
He seems eager to do it again. Let’s get our popcorn ready.