The impression is that the president of Armenia, who congratulated the three parties which have overcome the barrier of seven per cent during the recent mayoral election in Yerevan, and the chief of Transparency International organization Amalya Kostanyan are from different countries and they are speaking of different elections.
All what happened during the city council elections came to prove the cynical approach of the governmental powers to people; the violations such as electoral bribe, ballot stuffing in the presence of a lot of people, busing people to precincts and ignoring monitors – all these violations are cynical ignorance and behavior against all citizens of the country.
The real ambitions of the political powers running for the city council elections were revealed after the elections and showed that the conflicts between the RPA and PA before the elections were mere demonstration for the purpose of legalizing the votes they had received. Maybe if the elections were fair the PA would get more votes than the RPA, but the fact is that Gagik Tsarukyan’s political party would never get more votes than the opposition party in Yerevan. As a rule, during all elections the capital city of Armenia has voted for the opposition. The hopes that the ARF would overcome the barrier of seven per cent did not come true. The ARF will not take part in the administration of Yerevan during the coming four months. The ARF realized this fact a little bit later because the ARF’s representative in the CEC had already signed the preliminary protocol, even though he says that he did not want to do that. Later the ARF announced that they would not sign the protocol because they had not got the proportion of votes they believed they would because either the voters did not trust them or the authorities let them down. Definitely they did not get enough votes due to both these two reasons.
The Heritage party representative did not sign the protocol and claimed that the elections had been illegal. The most important thing is the opinion of the radical opposition, according to which once again the people representing the interests of the governmental powers in electoral commissions violated the elections and grabbed their votes. How are the opposition people going to protect their votes in case when before the elections they called on their supporters to do so? After the presidential election the opposition chose the method of active and 24-hours struggle. It is interesting that after seeing the authorities forcing the opposition and pressing down the riot of March 1 with power force and taking oppositionists as political prisoners the opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan announced that he was ready to form a government of mutual agreement with the authorities. During the rally organized by the opposition following the city council elections of Yerevan the ANC leader refused any possibility of entering into a dialogue with the government and informed the people about resigning from the city council and promised to return with brief information on the opposition’s future strategy shortly on June 12. In fact, the opposition admits that the rule in the country is in the hands of criminal groups and they are not able to struggle against them. They are not able to struggle because they prefer to fight only in accordance with the law and take the power through elections only. It is impossible in Armenia. It is not the right choice to bring the example of Georgia, but the Georgian opposition has chosen the only way of replacing the criminal government which does not consider their interests, and this way is not against the Constitution and goes through active and 24-hours struggle every day. However, in order to be able to lead such a movement people need someone who is able to bear responsibilities, who is motivated to be responsible for the results. Does the ANC leader have such motivation or wish? Let’s wait till June 12 and see whether he does. Before this time the RPA and PA parties will have shared their powers in the city council. There will be some conflicts between these parties as well. The PA is ready to give the biggest share of the cake to the RPA. This is what they have learnt from the ARF.