“Our society with its wishes and opportunities reminds us of an old-age man, who dreams about his ideal – blond or by taste black beauty. But in the morning he wakes up next to a mad and noisy woman.” The author of this typical comparison, which is very close to Armenia’s reality, is the president of the “Society against terror” NGO, YSU professor, Tigran Hakobyan. In his opinion our society is in the same condition. “In their visions people imagine an ideal type of deputies – honest, clever, committed to ideas, working on behalf of people. But as a rule they go vote for the worst ones.” In the context of comparison of a “blond beauty” and the “mad old woman” Hakobyan mentions that our country, by achieving independence, having victory at Karabagh war but not enjoying the fruit of victory, people preferred a more pragmatic policy. They are thinking how they can benefit by giving their vote to a party or candidate. “And they are not thinking what their vote is going to give to their children or grandchildren. Instead they hope they can receive some monetary aid or a bottle of vodka during the funeral of the old grandma, etc. First of all the government is responsible for such a situation, which alienated itself from the people. I am sure that if the state propaganda constantly repeats for some time that the best solution for Armenia is the stone-age many people will start to believe that. During the cold and dark years they have broken the people and destroyed their value system.”
And the majority of the population prefers cash among other methods of electoral bribe. Can we state that cash is the most wide-spread and productive method of electoral bribe? According to Hakobyan money is a quite old tool. The new tools include more money and application of administrative resources and more people engaged in violations. The rest are just tools to legalize what has been mentioned above. The last ones include stupid concerts, fireworks, so called “agitation materials”.
“Also the communication methods have not changed. They remain the same as the candidates are always repeating that they are coming to rescue citizens. This is all. We don’t hear of any normal platform or plans. First of all a political group with political will must be formed, which will be able to change radically what we have right now. This should be started from the bottom. I don’t expect any revolutions. I am even afraid that the revolutionary ambition of the people will not bring any results. If you leave it to people’s choice they might just elect president or king of Armenia someone like Tigran Karapetich. I don’t rust the choice of people now. They might blame me of expressing anti-democratic ideas but I think that our people are not able to make a conscious and wise choice.”
Regardless of who’s in the proportional list or whether those are independent deputies, people envision those parties as a one-leader party and that the choice is going to be made not on behalf of the party but the individual. Hakobyan agreed with this approach. “Yes, today the competition is not among ideologies or platforms but persons, which in order to stay in power and enjoy the privileges of power, spoil the culture of elections in Armenia. The fact is that the electorate of our country unites the majority of our citizens and most of them are educated. The rich ones are going to “humiliate” us by $100 and by a fake promise. That’s a pan-national disaster.” We noticed gloom on the face of Hakobyan. He probably remembered his teachers, whose behavior enabled us to assure that they never eat or in other words don’t go to the bathroom. Our government officials are trudging our teachers from restaurant to restaurant and treat them with pork barbecue. On that day the teachers are making their hair, wear festive clothes and go to the restaurants to have party with the ones, who weren’t even able to graduate from school. And they never say, stop gentlemen, instead of that restaurant you could have bought a computer for the school or restored the school. The top offers the bottom doesn’t mind. And later after being elected the government says, “what do you want? The society is spoilt.” We also asked Mr. Hakobyan why he hadn’t mentioned anything about the opposition during the conversation. “Of course I mentioned that the opposition has been with people during the cold and dark years.”
At the end of the conversation Hakobyan said that it’s not relevant to speak about literate political commercials. “In our country pre-election technologies and the freedom of commercial materials are similar You see, the 15th anniversary of the army has been celebrated. The purpose of that was to glorify Serge Sargsyan. The army wasn’t glorified. Pay attention to the big billboards of the city, which is dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the army – “My weapon is my smile, my charm, my face, etc”. What does it have to do with the soldiers, who are in the border right now, or lost their lives in the battle field?” You cannot maintain a good state with acting or duduk or singing. . If you go deeper it looks like mockery of our army. They ignore the main goals of the country and instead decide to sing and dance. This is a dead society.”