When the opposition starts complaining about how expensive airtime is and the shortage of funds, adviser to the Armenian president Garnik Isagulyan remembers the title of this article from one of the famous Armenian fables.
This is what Mr. Isagulyan said on Wednesday during a press conference with Arshak Sadoyan at the “Hayeli” club. Of course, he mentioned that he did not have the intention of offending anyone.
The real debate started in a rather interesting way. Journalists noticed that Mr. Sadoyan had come to the conference in a new car and they congratulated him. Mr. Isagulyan started his speech by expressing his condolences on the death of former president of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin. In fact, the adviser to the president mentioned beforehand that he would try to make his speech short and give the opposition the chance to speak more.
Sadoyan was immodest and immediately started to complain about how expensive airtime is, saying that one minute for a televised campaign is 2-3 times more expensive than a market advertisement. Let us recall that Sadoyan is second on the electoral list of the “Democratic Way” political party, headed by Manuk Gasparyan. Almost everyone knows Manuk Gasparyan, Arshak Sadoyan and Aghasi Arshakyan, who is also on the list, but Mr. Sadoyan complains that the party has a problem with appearing in the public eye.
“Many times they ask me if I have been nominated or not,” complains Sadoyan.
In general, according to the leader of the National Democratic Alliance, it is very hard for oppositional parties to implement a campaign because funds are insufficient. In response to the observation that those are the same conditions for the other parties, including the pro-government parties, Sadoyan replied that it is easy for the latter because they have the use of government vehicles or, for example, they don’t have problems with renting an auditorium.
“They gather people with one phone call and make beautiful speeches,” said Sadoyan. In response to that, Isagulyan repeated his own phrase, which has been heard recently: these elections are going to be elections of organizations-whoever has the most organizations will win. The opposition, according to Isagulyan, is relying only on television airtime. Sadoyan obviously had his point of view on this issue. Based on his estimations, it is necessary to have 0.5-1 million dollars for organizations at all locations, and the opposition doesn’t have that much money. The reason for that is the people on which the opposition is based are in a difficult social condition, and it is impossible for them to make donations to the parties. As far as the businessmen are concerned, they are simply afraid to help the opposition because they may lose their businesses. According to Sadoyan, they collect the mobile phone numbers of any businessmen they meet so their conversation may be listened to secretly. Sadoyan’s opponent contradicted by saying that there are oppositional parties that have many funds but he did not go into detail as to which he meant. On the other hand, according to Isagulyan, if the opposition is complaining about the shortage of means, it could have united and found those means. Why didn’t the opposition unite? This was Isagulyan’s question, and he answered it himself: it was about ambitions.
What’s interesting is that anyone who doesn’t know Isagulyan may think that he doesn’t sleep at night and only thinks about the opposition.
“I would like to have the opposition have 30-35% of the votes in parliament,” said Isagulyan sincerely, with the hope that the oppositionists will later take his advice into account and won’t place themselves in such a difficult situation.
Let us just recall that Isagulyan is the adviser to the president and not the opposition, and move on. Mr. Isagulyan is convinced that the people are not afraid at all and have not lost their faith in the upcoming elections. Isagulyan has been convinced of that during his different visits to the Marzes of Armenia and advised Sadoyan to take a trip with him, conceal himself “as Shah Abas did”, and be convinced.
Isagulyan also expressed an interesting opinion. If a political party reaches success in the elections, this doesn’t mean that it is a pro-government party. The interesting thing is not this opinion so much as the example brought up by Isagulyan: the United Workers’ Party.
As for Sadoyan, he complained about the processes taking place within the oppositional parties, which split up and become smaller as a result. In particular, he recalled the stories connected with the Constitutional Rights Union, the National Democratic Union, the Armenian Popular Party and the Communists. According to Sadoyan, it is not that correct to blame the opposition for not working effectively in conditions like these. Although, it must be said that the blame goes to these same parties for not being able to prevent such processes from taking place and there is no reason to blame anyone else in this case.