Armenians know that Armenian TV companies don’t allot hours to oppositionist parties even if they pay for that. Rule of Law has sued for that, however, I don’t think the court will punish anyone. If the oppositional parties can have an influence on TV companies that seem to be independent, then they can have an influence on the court, which also seems to be independent.
It is worth mentioning that several days ago “Yerevan” TV company allowed the RL to appear on the channel. The party members talked about the meeting of the RL leaders with the citizens of Ashtarak. They covered everything; starting from the moment when everyone in the hall stood up to welcome Arthur Baghdasaryan and ending with the applauses. It is clear that people are sick and tired of the current authorities and will applaud for anyone who criticizes them. However, the broadcast of the RL was edited in the RL, but not at the TV company. This means that they could cut one of the parts when the people were applauding the RL leader.
It is a shame that the abovementioned liberal politician, Arthur Baghdasaryan, wants to become “a wise leader” during the hard times that Armenia is currently going through. This not only concerns the RL, but also the leaders of the other parties. They are speaking about democracy and their will to develop democracy in Armenia, but when you look at the participants and their number in the hall, it seems that you are in North Korea.
Now let’s go back to the meeting with the citizens of Ashtarak. Everything that Arthur Baghdasaryan said was true. He spoke about the problems of migration, corruption and other issues. He mentioned concrete numbers about the losses that our country had as a result of the currency exchange rate changes, he brought birth, migration and divorce statistics. He said that young people don’t get married because they don’t have anywhere to live. As a result of that only 35 thousand boys were born during the last two years, which means that in 18 years our army will have a minimum of 35 thousand soldiers. Are there any solutions? The other orators spoke about the solutions they had found. It turns out that one of the best solutions is to elect Arthur Baghdasaryan as president. They didn’t mean that people would start getting married and having children as soon as Arthur Baghdasaryan became president. They proposed solutions and recommendations their party had come up with. For instance, they said that for each new-born child the government could give 100 thousand drams to families, and for the second child in the family- 200 thousand dram, etc. Besides that, they said that they had to construct new buildings and open new vacancies. It sounds pretty good.
Now let’s imagine that everything goes just like the RL has planned. Let’s say the RL has a majority in the new parliament elected in 2007 and Arthur Baghdasaryan runs for president. People get encouraged and start having babies (however, we understand that in that case the birth statistics will start growing only after 2009). So what? It will be late. They say that our army will be in very poor situation in 18 years, thus according to their solution it will be late since those young children will be 15 years old 18 years from now. Accordingly, they’d better come up with solutions on what to do now so that we can live normally in 30-35 years with only 30-35 soldiers in the army. Either we will have to improve the army so much so that it becomes very professional and strong regardless of its small capacity (which is impossible to do now having en economy that is not developed enough to provide good financial support to the army), or we will have to develop good relations with our neighbors and try to find solutions before going through a quick demographic fall. Nevertheless, the RL doesn’t like such discussions at all. This subject is very vulnerable; they may be accused of lack of patriotism.
Why are we discussing the unofficial advocacy campaign so much? The reason is the fact that both the pro-government and the oppositional parties have started campaigning the same way. They are trying to meet people, explain to them that there are many problems in the country such as corruption, etc. (as for the pro-government parties, they will only talk about their failures), and will then ask people to elect them so that they can solve those problems. As for the vulnerable issues, they will either not discuss them or will say a couple of words and then slowly move on to other issues, such as the issue of reimbursing the Soviet credits, etc. It seems to them that the Karabagh conflict will be settled as soon as they reimburse the Soviet credits to citizens.
In other words, it is not enough to only talk about flaws, corruption and discuss the current situation during campaigning. The society knows that very well. Accordingly, first of all parties should have their own programs and come up with solutions on how they can develop the country and solve the problems they are talking about. As for such meetings, applauses can’t solve any problems. If they think they can, the prop-government parties may rent bigger halls and fill those halls with so many people that the other parties will be jealous with them. North Korean leader Kim Chan Iri used to do such things too, but he failed to change the situation in North Korea. The situation does not change due to the fact that they are applauding without thinking.