“Rule of Law” is going door to door

24/09/2006 Lilit SEYRANYAN

The official paper of “Rule of Law” party has published an announcement, according to which they are inviting people to work as mechanics, motor mechanics, drivers and other relevant positions. Nevertheless, the announcement writes that only “Rule of Law” members can apply for the mentioned vacancies. When reading this announcement it seems that this party is deeply involved in a car business and has lack of workers.

According to our informed sources from “Rule of Law” (RL), this announcement is a trick, which purpose is to call on new people and make them join their party by promising them jobs. The problem is that this is not the only thing that the RL is doing; recently there are many rumors about this party. It is said that in Davitashen, Malatyan and Kentron communities of Yerevan and in Marzes the headquarters of this party are working like religious groups. The representatives of this party are going door to door, knocking at the doors of citizens and trying to explain them that the leader of their party, Arthur Baghdasaryan is fair so much that he hardly resisted the company of the existing authorities for three years and at least at the end of his tenure managed to drop his position and tell them that he is becoming an oppositional power. Those members of the RL that are going door to door, whom they call as their “working power”, are giving the editions of their paper to citizens and asking them to read it, especially the last pages, where several RL members are explaining why they should join the RL. Since the number of people dropping their memberships in this party is growing, they are trying to make people believe that they are not going to drop their image of “a democracy bearer” ever. Since the party is collapsing, they have started organizing campaigns and making such announcements as mentioned above. It is said that the RL is trying to find jobs for some people as well. However, please note that those rare people have to be very active, i.e. for instance by working as a taxi driver they have to make campaign everywhere and make their passengers to join their party. It is said that those people have a certain number of responsibilities, i.e. each of them must bring at least 15 people to join their party a month. Most of those people are not able to resist that responsibility and have to leave their jobs in taxi services and as well as the party.

For example, in one of the RL official newspapers it was written: “Some people were dreaming of seeing the RL collapsing, even some of them thought it would happen. They were wrong, they were even disappointed because the party is strengthening and the process that is happening now is the vice versa they thought. All the headquarters of RL are full of people that want to join it. The number of citizens that have joined the RL during this month covers 5171. Several Armenian parties taken together don’t have such a huge number of members. In other words, the number of RL members covers 65.000 and tends to grow rapidly”. Understanding that hardly anyone could be disappointed, the person who said this sentence wrote trying to threaten: “In the next edition we are going to state the opinions of 100 new members of our party from Yerevan, which tell about their decision and what they think about obtaining membership in the RL”

For the purpose of “disappointing” some people, the RL published the mentioned information in their next edition. Nevertheless, it is not clear how readers may know whether those articles were written by new members or not.

The most amazing thing is the fact that neither of the new members of the RL writes about any specific works done by the party that has served a reason for them to join it. For instance, Lusya Khachatryan writes that she has always liked civic work, worked as a secretary in the communist’s party during the Soviet period and since its collapse she hasn’t advocated any ideologies of any of the existing political parties because she didn’t find any clear and fair ideas there.

“Nevertheless, I had the honor to know some members of the RL closer and I decided to join the party and take part in the implementation of the programs that this party has”, writes L. Khachatryan and does not note which parts of the program specifically she wants to realize. Instead of that, she writes that she regrets that she hasn’t joined the party before.

Another citizen, pensioner Valintina Harutyunyan writes that she has followed the political developments of the recent years and has not advocated any of the parties. “I joined the RL due to a friend, but after coming and seeing the people here and reading the by-laws I realized that this is the only political power that I can advocate and work in favor of”, writes the citizen and as well as informs who that friend is, “I respect the head of the RL, who has come out of the public and become a politician that cares about the trouble of people. He worries about people more than about his career. I believe he will be the one that will celebrate victory after the coming elections”.

The new members of this party often confess that they are not informed about the by-laws and policy of their party, which makes it evident that most of them joined the mentioned party due to the announcements mentioned above. For instance, technique-technologist Armine Matanyan writes that when she decided to join the RL she didn’t know anything about the programs and by-laws of the RL. “I knew only Arthur Baghdasaryan as a politician, who was moving forward and had several friends that were members of his party… People often ask me what this party means to me. I say that it means fairness, honesty and I have a lot of friends…” writes the technologist.

Another person, student Mary Saghatelyan writes that she thought that she would never be involved in politics, but “suddenly” she realized that she was carefully following what the RL was doing. “As a young person I am more interested in the youth policy of the RL and what it does to solve the problems of youth”, writes Mary, “I understood that the RL keeps an eye on all the groups of the population and pays due attention to the problems of the youth and considers youth as the future leaders of the future of Armenia”.

Realizing that we may “get on the nerves” of our readers, we don’t want to write more about the samples of the RL new members. We think that these facts are enough to understand that the announcement of that party saying that the number of new members that joined their party during this month covers 5171 is just a “trick”. One of the main facts that confirms this point is the fact that currently people compare the RL with the regressing religious groups that are going door to door, knocking at people’s doors and “trying to assure them that Arthur Baghdasaryan is clean”. It is a pity that people can believe in the fairness and clearness of neither Arthur Baghdasaryan, nor the mentioned regressing religious groups.