There are 8 days left before the end of the campaign. For 8 more days the glorious parties will be rallying in different regions of our country and advocating their advantages and the shortcomings of opponents.
It’s noteworthy to mention that this time our politicians have started to pay more attention to show-like events. Of course, they don’t dance or drum like Bush yet, but everything is still ahead. But that is not what is important. The most essential thing is that to our people all the parties sound and seem oppositional. It seems the government isn’t participating in the campaign. It’s just the opposition.
Can you guess who the author of those words is? “The reduction of corruption is not tangible because many people are ignoring its main component – PR. They forgot that the fight against corruption also assumes punishment. If we start to hear that once a month or twice a month or even every week that some statesmen is arrested or fired because of corruption, we’ll register tangible results. The problem in Armenia is not that the minister is corrupt; the problem is that everybody, even the lowest ranking statesmen, is corrupt.” No, this statement was not made by an oppositional party, which would be quite easy to understand. The author of this statement is Serj Sargsyan, who heads the government. An average citizen would hardly mind a fight against corruption. The interesting thing about the Republicans is also the fact that they don’t frequently publicize their achievement of a dual digit economic growth. They speak about remarkable numbers but not as often as they could.
Nonetheless, let’s continue. ARF also pays special attention to the fight against corruption. Moreover, unlike the RPA, which has started to sound oppositional only recently, ARF has been doing that for a long time. All that was done in a transparent way. They were saying that they couldn’t effectively fight against corruption because they are the minority. That means that others are impeding them. Perhaps it would be more acceptable if the ARF members were not healthcare, social security and education ministers and if their member was not the President’s advisor on corruption reduction. Is there no corruption in the sectors they are managing? Of course there is, and it would be possible to reduce that if there was the intention to do so.
Let’s go ahead. ULP! But let’s talk about ULP later. ULP has a shorter history of joining the coalition. Of course the voice of ULP chairman, Gurgen Arsenyan, sometimes also sounds slightly oppositional.
There is no need to remind that prior to the ULP, it was the Legal State, which was the third party in the governmental coalition. However, so much was spoken and even “heard” about the Legal State that there is nothing to add. Nevertheless, the Legal State has never refused the opposition title even when in government. They were opposing even when the Legal State members were campaigning on behalf of Robert Kocharyan during presidential elections and those, as you know, were “anti-oppositional rallies”. There is even no need to remind that it was Legal State deputy-chairman, Mher Shahgeldyan, who was heading the “Yes” campaign during the Constitutional Referendum. He was actively opposing the opposition, which thought the referendum was falsified.
Let’s speak about the Prosperous Armenia Party. One of the slogans of that party is “if you wish to work, vote for Prosperous Armenia”. Perhaps many people accepted that stuff literally – “let’s become a Prosperous Armenia member and be employed or, by party support, open a business”. However the mentioned party doesn’t behave as oppositional, as do the other governmental parties. They just petition people to trust them to build a prosperous Armenia.
In this regard I’d like to remind you of one of the opinions expressed by RA Foreign Minister, Vardan Oskanian, when being interviewed by the Austrian “Der Standard”. By responding to the question relating to Prosperous Armenia, Oskanian said, “Such phenomena occur in other democratic and even European states. We had a vacuum. As our opposition has been fragmented during the past years, our people needed some new force to appear.” This means that Prosperous Armenia unites those people, who were protesting against Kocharyan in 2003. It’s not that possible, or perhaps it is a result of a wrong translation. At any rate, if Prosperous Armenia enters the Parliament, it won’t mean that anybody who wishes to work will work, or the ones who wish to study will, because they always mention that they need 50 plus 1% of the votes for the implementation of their platform. Let’s sum up the list of the parties with Tigran Karapetyan’s People’s Party. He calls himself a centrist. However “centrism” is not fashionable any more. And now even governmental forces prefer acting oppositional. The speeches of Tigran Karapetyan always have an oppositional orientation. But things may change when the People’s Party enters the Parliament. It may become more centrist. If it doesn’t win the elections, it will either have to take old grandmas and grandpas to Sevan for the coming 5 years, or become a true oppositional party. Under these circumstances, Tigran Karapetyan’s ALM may have the same fate as A1+.
Shortly said, the government is stealing the “bread” of the opposition and the opposition instead is getting even more fragmented inside. They criticize each other more than the government. The oppositional front is also confused. Only the slogan of Artashes Geghamyan’s party has changed. The slogan “Let’s save the fatherland together” is replaced by “Let’s save the fatherland with unity”. Aram Karapetyan is busy with publicizing the lives of ministers. Aram Z. Sargsyan petitions Demirchyan and Geghamyan to flip a coin and choose tails or heads. In these conditions, the social polls look really strange. On one hand the results state that 60% of the population believes that the elections will proceed with violations (they don’t trust the government); on the other hand the results claim that 60-70% of the population will vote on behalf of the government. It’s impossible not to believe social polls, especially when those are conducted by sociologist Aharon Adibekyan. Only two options exist. The people are either confused and don’t know who the government and who the opposition is, or they have started to sympathize with falsifiers. In any case that is what the polls show.