The event of May 12 (Parliamentary elections) threw many people into despair, while many others are speaking about the uncorrectable deformation of the political system and blaming the people for that. But we should also note that the May events also have some positive sides, at which by looking we may think that the people who were oppressed by social and economic issues didn’t sell themselves to the best planned project of the government – the Prosperous Armenia party. The political party established about a year ago had just one goal – to prolong the life of Kocharyan. By becoming majority in the National Assembly, Prosperous Armenia was meant to become a back-up for future Prime Minister Kocharyan and make him the number one face of the state in accordance to the amended Constitution.
In order to do so they decided to pick the most influential tycoon – Gagik Tsarukyan – who’s grateful to President Robert Kocharyan for his success in business. The residents of Kotayk (I personally witnessed and heard) swear by the name of Gagik Tsarukyan and say that unlike other rich people, who only think about filling their pockets, Tsarukyan shares his wealth and success with the needy. They don’t have any doubt that in Armenia’s current condition, it’s impossible to become rich in a legal way but don’t mind a generous wealthy person. The cliché “the man thinks about others” provides innocence to the oligarch. By picking Tsarukyan, Kocharyan wanted to disseminate the model of Kotayk in the whole country and wanted to create an image by which people besides getting rich also share their wealth with the destitute. For that reason they tried to recruit as many people as possible, hoping that their 350,000 members would provide at least 750,000 votes for Prosperous Armenia. What happened? The party received only 204,000 votes. Does this mean that only 204,000 of the 350,000 voted for the party, or if we go deeper will we find out that those were only 40-45 thousand and the rest was gained due to the people who were very affected by the Prosperous Armenia campaign? Perhaps the votes of Prosperous Armenia were stolen but the party is not going to complain. This means that they agree with what they have. At any rate, if the party doesn’t gain as many votes as it has members it means that the numbers were just magnified.
Who disrupted the “Prosperous Armenia” project planned by the President’s Staff? It’s not right to defiantly accuse the Republicans of that, although the main opponent of the Prosperous Armenia was RPA, which gained victory by exclusively using its administrative resources – 507 out of nearly 950 communities of Armenia are headed by the Republicans. Ten of those are heads of Yerevan communities. The number of Republican mayors is also high. Nevertheless, if we divide the 458,258 votes of the RPA into 507 it will turn out that each head of community has provided 900 votes. This number will considerably reduce if we separately calculate the army, police, armed forces, etc. The RPA didn’t have any need to steal votes from Prosperous Armenia. All they did was use the administrative resource. Meanwhile, Prosperous Armenia knew it couldn’t possibly steal votes from the RPA. Prosperous Armenia was supposed to gain the votes of the ones who are not in the administrative sector. They were supposed to gain votes from the disappointed Legal State supporters or other oppositional parties. This is where the positive sides of the May 12 events are revealed. Despite the fact that people were disappointed with the populist Legal State Party and the fragmented participation of the opposition in the election, people preferred to annul their votes rather than give it to some party, the leader of which only tends to maintain his wealth and gives promises to share it with others. The people didn’t believe Gagik Tsarukyan; they didn’t accept the slogan – “Let’s build a prosperous Armenia together” because they realized that even if Armenia ever becomes prosperous, it will not be done by the chinovniks (social servants) of the President’s Office or one benevolent oligarch. In order to realize this, the average voter doesn’t need to think very much. The Prosperous Armenia slogan “the strong ones fair (lawful), the weak – protected” reveals a key contradiction. The citizen of a legal state must live a prosperous and normal life and not have to be protected by the strong ones. Who was Tsarukyan supposed to protect his weak electorate from? The hail, or perhaps the wolf?
We may state that this time a great mass of people made a real choice by making the presidential project fail. People proved that they are the strong and fair, and that the weak are the people who wish to make their businesses prosper by seeking protection inside the walls of Parliament. This inspires us for a good future. Another inspiring thing is that the dominating Republican Party received 1/3 of the people’s votes, and 1/5 of the people who have the right to vote. As a matter of fact, on May 12 people changed the government without the help of the opposition.