Leader of the United Labor Party (ULP) Gurgen Arsenyan considers the pre-election situation in Armenia as satisfactory and the political processes as normal.
The political party considers the situation as satisfactory because “satisfactory for this situation is satisfactory”. There is still much to do before the ULP gives a good or excellent mark. For example, it is necessary to do everything possible so that the elections are not too critical and the election results are not too debatable. The ULP promises to do everything it can in order to achieve that. For example, the ULP representatives in the election commissions will disallow fraudulent registrations. The party promises that “the ballots in the ballot box will not change, and whatever will be in the ballot box will also be in the registrations”. However, according to Arsenyan, this doesn’t mean that the ULP commission members are going to run down the streets to see where passports are being collected or where there are accumulations.
During the press conference on Wednesday at the “Pastark” club, the leader of ULP also announced that “more than 20,000 ULP members are ready” to start the pre-election campaign today, but in order to not break the law, they are waiting for the official launch of the pre-election campaign which is on April 8. It is obvious that the ULP already has its slogan. While choosing the slogan, party members had made references to poet Paruyr Sevak, but Arsenyan did not mention what reference they had made and suggested waiting a couple of more days until the campaign officially starts. Referring to the appointment of Serge Sargsyan as RA Prime Minister, Arsenyan declared that his political party defends Serge Sargsyan’s nomination as Prime Minister because “Serge Sargsyan is the person whom the party trusts”.
ULP leader Gurgen Arsenyan also referred to the assassination attempt on mayor of Gyumri and member of the Republican Party council Vardan Ghukasyan. Arsenyan does not consider that attempt as a political murder because “there are no underground terrorist groups in Armenia to declare legitimate targets”. For example, according to him, Shamil Basayev declared Russians over the age of 10, seized a school in Beslan and killed children. Arsenyan tried to prove his point differently, but it turned out to be ridiculous.
“If something belonging to the representative of the ruling party somewhere is lost after the hailstorm, is that a case that should be taken up to the political level?” asked G. Arsenyan. In other words, he compared the assassination attempt with a natural disaster. How should an assassination be for Gurgen Arsenyan to consider it political? Here the ULP leader mentioned the events that took place at the National Assembly on October 27, 1999 and brought up examples of well-known terrorist groups that claim that they were the organizers.