– Mr. Gasparyan, do you have a professional picture of how the presidential elections are going to proceed and the chances of psychologically affecting the voters?
– I suppose that the old and new electoral bribing methods will be applied but we should also admit that it’s impossible to “attract” all the voters with the same method. There are a few conditional groups of voters. There are the ones, who are oriented and know what they want. The other group includes the ones, who don’t care who they are going to vote for. The important thing is that the candidate opposes the incumbent government. The third group includes the swing voters. It’s not hard to guess that various mechanisms and technologies are applied for each group. The presidential elections differ from parliamentary ones because in this case you are voting for a single candidate and during NA elections one elects a group, a party, behind which stand not only people but also ideologies. I think that during presidential elections women should be more active because the candidates are women and they are applying to all of the voters for support. This is a quite serious factor, which lures the self-dignity and moral narcissism of women. There is some intimate moment in elections. First they vote secretly and it seems that a situation is created when a few people are offering everybody to vote for them. You know, it’s a bit hard to speak about the psychological tools, which affect our people. During the last century our people have suffered major traumas, which are psychologically stressful. In particular, I mean the genocide issue.
– Do you think the recognition of the genocide will take our people out of stress?
– Indeed. It will have a positive influence on our collective unconsciousness. I think it will have a psychological therapeutic effect. Even during Karabakh war everything wasn’t very smooth. Although the Armenian nation won the Karabakh war the victory is kind of not validated yet. The future is not very clear; we don’t have new achievements and even in that victory we see loss. The factor of elections also stresses people. The person votes for this or that candidate but as a rule the candidate he prefers never wins. It means that whatever we choose doesn’t give the expected results. For example, the elections of 96 were falsified and it was announced by the previous government. These people become distrustful to their own votes.
– Can we consider this lack of trust the main reason of accepting bribes? People are sure that their votes won’t matter and they are trying to reimburse their non-confidence by taking bribes.
– We should also note that many people after accepting bribes have voted for the candidates they preferred. I have been informed of such a case in Vanadzor. People have taken the bribes but voted for the ones, who they preferred in fact. Here another psychology works. They say that no matter what this money is stolen from people and why not take it back in the form of bribes. Besides that the electoral bribe only temporarily buys the vote of the voter. When we reach the level, when the vote of a citizen will become valuable perhaps we won’t have the need of such interviews.
– RA First President Levon Ter-Petrosyan is going to run in the forthcoming presidential elections. His governance period is as a rule associated with “cold and dark” years. Can this factor be dominant during elections?
– People have ambiguous feelings about Ter-Petrosyan. On one hand he was a victorious president, a president, who wasn’t able to enjoy the fruits of his victory. On the other hand, the period of his governance is associated with cold and dark years. And this fact originates negative feelings among people. For example, during the previous rally one of my friends offered me to go to the rally. When I asked why he wanted to go he answered, “I want to find out if I have to buy a wood furnace.” Of course this is a joke but it speaks of the influence of those years, which still remains in the sub-consciousness of people. There are certain phenomena, which were consequences of war (I perfectly know myself because I have been to Karabakh during the war many times). I know how difficult it is for a country to survive the fact that several hundreds of thousand of dollars would be squandered a day in the battle field. But I also know that the mentioned period originated such phenomena, which continue till now.
– Can the government respect the people, whose vote was bought by bribing them and can the bribed voters respect the government?
– Yes in that case both the voters and government are criminal colleagues. But in any case people are guiltier when they accept bribes even in cases when they think that they are revenging on the government by taking bribes.
– Of course you follow the distance dialog between Ter-Petrosyan and Robert Kocharyan as well as the mutual criticism addressed to each other. Does any of them have privilege? Who of them has better arguments to convince voters?
– I should honestly say that my busy schedule and interest sector doesn’t enable me to follow by media the criticism addressed between the candidates. Both of them are vulnerable. This was proven by the last statements of Kocharyan. This is a quite phenomenon in psychology.
– Even today it is evident that the main competitors of the presidential race are going to be Serzh Sargsyan and Ter-Petrsoyan. In your professional opinion which are the weaknesses, which they don’t consider in their campaign?
– To say what I have seen is violation of professional debt. One thing I can say for sure. There are numerous rigid messages in the body languages of both of the candidates, which can send negative impulses. Perhaps the psychologists, who work with them, don’t pay attention to what should be done to ensure that the body language doesn’t send negative signals.