Taking into account the recent developments, we may assume that political powers have already started their pre-election campaign. I do not mean the rally organized by Tigran Karapetyan. In fact this rally was a failure, but we should not be happy about that. This is not good for us. Because usually such politicians have lots of followers, but this rally showed that people are disappointed so much that they don’t even take part in these kinds of rallies.
I mean the parliamentary discussions. For two days the “Rule of Law” MPs and Republicans are criticizing each other. The “Rule of Law” strongly criticized the Governmental draft program of privatizations of 2001-2003, they also said some facts, which proved that most of these decisions were violations and crimes. Of course, the Republicans will give their payback very soon and will present numerous cases of such privatizations and violations on the part of “Rule of Law” representatives, but still…
Why do they do that? It is clear that the Government did these privatizations just like it is usually done in Armenia. I mean they have found buyers, fixed a price, arranged which part would go to the budget and which one to the pockets of the “top” as bribe, etc. Everyone knows that anyone having any relations with those privatizations may be arrested and be brought to justice. But on the other hand we know that the “Rule of Law” doesn’t care about the factories and buildings privatized for very low prices. Does anyone believe that MPs representing the coalition are first and foremost protecting the interests of the state? Haven’t the MPs representing the “Rule of Law” ever been informed how privatizations are made in Armenia? Haven’t they ever bought such buildings for very low prices? Do they wake up every morning and get amazed at why they don’t look like Angels? Maybe they don’t have wings because of lack of vitamins…
Actually this is what’s going on: the “Rule of Law” and ARF are trying to exclude the third member of the coalition, “Republican” party, out of the coalition in this pre-election period. Even a couple of days ago Vahan Hovhannisyan said that they wanted to punish some representatives of “Armenian Movement” party for their violations, but some ruling powers didn’t let them do so (hinting on the “Republicans”).
The approach of the opposition is interesting too. For instance, Viktor Dallakyan thinks that they shouldn’t accept this report of privatizations and should start a process of dropping vote of no confidence to the Government. Great thinking! They have always been saying that the government of our state is in the hands of just two people and everything depends on their wish, and now they are suggesting dissolving the Government (it is clear that after doing so these two will form a new Government). It is also possible that the oppositionists think that the main political “partner” of the president is the “Republican” party and they want to fight against it to weaken the president’s positions. It is hardly possible. The “support” of Kocharyan is not this party, but the environment that exists, where everyone is ready to harm the others only for the purpose to become the “partner” of the president. As for the opposition, if they join them they will just strengthen the power of the president.
So what kinds of problems are they going to solve by taking the “Republican” party out of the game? We understand that during the coming elections the ARF will get a minimum 10% of votes. The “Rule of Law” will get this much too. The oppositional powers will get about 20-30% altogether (they will not be allowed to get more). So who will get the remaining 50-60% of votes? In order to get so many votes they have to use an organized political power. The “Republican” party is the one that is organized enough to get this many votes. At the same time, this organized power is dangerous both for the opposition (they should be organized if they want to make election violations) and for the president (because it may get out of hand). In other words both the pro-governmental (of course by having the president’s “agreement”) and oppositional powers are trying to exclude the “Republicans”. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand the motives of the opposition. It is not difficult to understand that if the “Republicans” are excluded, these places will still be given to other pro-governmental powers, which will be more controllable.
In other words, the pre-election competition is getting stronger.