Following the holydays the inner routine life of our country is getting active again, i.e. parties are getting ready for the upcoming elections, people are speaking about possible collaboration between different parties, parties are negotiating more actively, etc. As for the other groups that are not involved in politics directly, they are discussing whether the upcoming elections will be violated again or not.
What has changed since 2003? The governing party is still the Republican party, Serj Sargsyan is still with that party, the ARF still keeps with the government and ignores “some small inner problems”, “Justice” alliance and “National Unity” party are negotiating actively and probably there will be conflict of interests between them in critical situations. In fact, neither the public opinion concerning the political processes has changed. As for the mentioned civic opinion, people thought that during the presidential elections of 2003 Kocharyan could not collect 50% of votes, notwithstanding the huge rallies and activation of the oppositional powers were pressed down by arresting the participants. We can’t say that since 2003 people have started living better and complain less, indeed, since that time the living expenses have grown much (especially for citizens that receive financial support from outside), the social polarization level has grown, etc.
Generally, there was only one change in the inner political life of the country during this time. A new political competent party was founded (Prosperous Armenia). However, membership in this party is like getting a new job for some time and most of the members of this party are people that dislike the existing authorities, but have no way but to adapt to that situation. For instance, people can either work harder and build a good state slowly or they can just buy a “lottery ticket” and hope that one day they may win. It depends on the approach that different people have. However, it is impossible to improve the living conditions for everyone with lottery bonuses.
I wander whether it is at least theoretically possible to organize democratic elections. It is not possible even theoretically. The reason is the fact that if the elections are not violated (if they give equal opportunities to all the political powers to appear on TV, they don’t give electoral bribe, etc.), 65-70% of the votes will be distributed between the oppositional powers and the governmental powers will receive only 30-35%. This is the reality. Besides that it is hard to imagine how the Republican Party, Prosperous Armenia and ULP may compete to get more votes from that 30-35%. This means that the governmental powers are going to compete for the mentioned 65-70%. In other words, at the very beginning it is clear that the elections will be violated and now the governmental powers are competing for the right to make those violations in their favor.
By the way, people should not believe the public researches that say the oppositional leaders have low ratings and only a couple of them can collect more than 5%. It is not excluded that it is true; however the situation will change immediately as soon as we change the results of those researches. Please try to imagine how many people are satisfied with the work of the existing authorities and you will see that the number of such people does not reach even 25%. It means that over 75% of voters either will vote for oppositional powers or will not take part in the elections at all. Such people may vote for the governmental parties only if they are given electoral bribe, otherwise they will not.
In a word, the upcoming elections cannot be fair and democratic even theoretically. However, the elections will take place in May and things may change before that.