Last year December 15 was a quite successful day for the United Labor Party of Armenia. It was when President Kocharyan in his TV interview said how satisfied he is of the cooperation of the government and ULP.
For ULP the most important part of the interview was Kocharyan’s format of the government, where he indeed mentioned the ULP. “Of course my close cooperation with the Republicans doesn’t close access of other political forces. Those forces include the Prosperous Armenia, ARF and the ULP, with which we are quite successfully cooperating. I anticipate an analogous format after the next parliamentary elections,” announced Kocharyan during his interview.
But now times have changed for the ULP and Kocharyan’s prediction of the format has become a little bit outdated. The reason is not that ULP’s relations with the other governmental parties have deteriorated. The reason is that the government before the elections has decided to find out the rating of Armenia’s political forces in order to figure out what format to speculate on. For that purpose the government conducted social polls and also ordered to check the rating of opposition parties. The outcome of the polls has been sad for the ULP and some other parties. Thus, Kocharyan regretted about envisioning ULP as part of the government format in his last interview. According to the polls ordered by the government the ULP’s rating is lower than the one of the newly established “Alliance” party. Their rating has been approximately 15%. RPA and the Prosperous Armenia have the highest rating among the governmental parties. The rating of the ARF Dashnaktsutyun has also been high and ARF will be able to overcome the 5% barrier. Instead of ULP the society wants to see a totally different party at the Parliament. Regardless of how surprising it is the society wants to see the People’ Party of Tigran Karapetyan at the Parliament. Karapetyan’s party rating equals the party rating of Artashes Geghamyan’s National Unity Party. According to the governmental polls PPA’s rating is lower than Legal State’s.
The outcome of those polls made the government review their plans of governmental formats in particular regarding the ULP. According to our information based on these polls certain former Legal State deputies entered the proportional list of Tigran Karapetyan’s party as his party rating is higher than ULP. This explains that the Legal State is still connected with the government. The ones who left the Legal State don’t explain why they deflect from the Legal State and joined Karapetyan’s party.
Regarding the rating of opposition parties the social polls showed that those parties separately have a very little rating. And their intention of forming a joint bloc failed. This means that they don’t have any good chances for a serious victory during elections.
Political scientist, NA Deputy, Hmayak Hovhannisyan expressed the following opinion about the polls conducted by the government, “Most part of the society is not yet oriented. At least this is what other polling results show. Usually the society decided who to vote for not months prior elections but on the eve of elections. That’s why I don’t accept that methodology. Even if the ULP as they say has a low rating it may change the situation during the campaign due to the swing voters. That’s why I thing it’s only a methodlogical game.”
P.S. By the way, another polls conducting organization – “Electoral Systems” Vox Populi NGO has also conducted social polls (conducted on February 3-25 among 1150 residents of Yerevan) before the nomination of parties and candidates to determine people’s attitude of people about parties. According to the results of the polls 58% of the population will participate in the elections. And 18% won’t participate. According to the polls only 6 parties overcame the 5% barrier. The party names were not mentioned though.