I wouldn’t write this letter if I hadn’t read the warning that you sent to journalists (or perhaps the entire Armenian society). “If you help make sure the 2007 parliamentary elections go well, are transparent, liberal and fair, then I will make a decision”. If I understood correctly, by saying “I will make a decision” on October 25, 2006, you meant that you would decide whether to run (or not be nominated) for president during the 2008 Armenian presidential elections: I was deeply moved by your approach to this. Of course, what good is it to run for president in a country where there were bad, non-transparent, violent, unfair parliamentary elections a year before? The ones that should be presidents in that kind of country are Artashes Geghamyan, Stepan Demirchyan, Aram Karapetyan, who forgets the 15-year independence of Armenia hints that Russia has chosen him as the best presidential candidate. By reading your conditional warning, I immediately thought about how much you hated the previous elections, the fraud, which you saw with disgust. But no matter how magical an eraser can be, it can’t erase the past. I understand that you don’t really care about erasing the past, as much as you care about not making mistakes in the years to come and I, as a journalist and an average Armenian citizen, truly wish that you become the next president of Armenia and am ready to help you. But before that, I would like to give you some advice. In order to have “good, transparent, liberal and fair” elections, reopen the “A1+” television network, which was shut down before the 2003 presidential elections. You are the Secretary of the Security Council adjacent to the President of Armenia and I think that you have a rather high reputation for raising that issue.
Why did I mention that first? It’s because you can’t have good elections when there is only one opinion expressed. I think that you will agree with me when I say that the time given for the electoral campaign is not enough to have people form opinions. If (for “principle” reasons) it’s impossible to reopen the “A1+” television network, then at least liberate one o the television networks that are under the influence of the president’s apparatus. You are the commander of the strongest army of the region and this isn’t a big thing that we’re asking for. I want your party to convince the people and win in the elections, so that the losing side-the opposition-, the journalists mixing things up and observers don’t say that one of the sides didn’t have the opportunity to express its personal opinion. Speaking of observers, I would like to ask you to please invite them. Let them come and see that we can finally organize good elections and have them stay observers and not stick their noses in Armenia’s democratic processes. To be honest, we Armenians are sick and tired of having those different European bureaucrats complain about this or that.
Going back to what you said about equality, I must say that it’s not good for Armenia’s reputation to close doors in front of the parties and unions. Are we afraid of them-the oppositionists that have been going along with the same, senseless ideology for the past five years? Let them gather, talk, criticize all they want. We can listen to what they have to say and draw conclusions when we talk about the strategies for the pre-election campaign.
The next thing that I would like to remind you of is the electoral lists. Let’s publish the lists in the papers and put them online. I think that there is enough time for that. People will read, find their names, report to the corresponding officials in case of the absence of family members’ names, give warnings that the same name is in a couple of lists and finally, have the opportunity to remember their deceased parents, relatives, neighbors or friends and speak well of them. Let them have a longing for their family members who are no longer with us, so that the people in Charbakh and Los Angeles, or Sari Tagh and Krasnodar don’t vote at the same time. Isn’t it possible to prepare the voters’ lists and then publish them after correcting them?
In fact, this is a great opportunity to once again instill the faith in the people, which didn’t exist during the past elections. I think that when you say “good, transparent, liberal and fair” elections, you don’t mean the votes of the citizens corrupted and dragging along in buses, but rather the votes of the citizens who have faith for a brighter Armenia. The only thing left to do is persuade the electoral commission members to be more serious when it comes time for elections. Just like you keep the Armenian army strong, you can do the same for setting rules and regulations for the elections. It’s not that hard for someone who has seen war and victory. Is it really that hard to explain to the commission members about the conditions for the elections and tell them that there can’t be 1,500 ballots in a poll where there are only 1,000 registered voters, or remind them that calculating the number of votes is done just like 4th grade math? So, the number of people who cast their votes for the given party must be equivalent to the total number of votes, or the number of citizens that didn’t participate in the elections is the difference of the registered citizens on the list and the people that actually voted. I know that after this letter is published there will be some hooligans who will try to cast a shade on the elections, but on behalf of me and my colleagues, I promise to do everything I can to reveal the fraud and shameful crimes. After all, we not only want to see “good, transparent, liberal and fair” elections, but also dream of you making a final decision.