The head of the PACE observation mission John Prescott says that the Armenian elections will be interesting. In fact, he is true and our elections and the organizers of those elections have always interested and surprised foreigners by showing new forms of electoral violations each time.
Furthermore, Mr. Prescott has always been surprised and says that there are too many people in polling stations and it looks like a train station. He also says that the Media coverage is unequal.
By the way, Mr. Prescott is from Engalnd and has not spent much time in Armenia, thus he doesn’t know what is happening here on election days. Such things would surprise the former British deputy MP Mr. Prescott a lot. An incident which happened several years ago is the best example to show how it can be surprising to him. During a meeting a young man threw an egg at Prescott. Prescott attacked the guy and quarreled with him. It is very strange that the policemen attacked and tried to stop not the young man, but the deputy PM. This scene has been numerously shown on TV. It is available in the internet too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRQDnGTcc4A. The young man was arrested soon, but was set free after a while. Now let’s imagine what would happen if someone threw an egg at Prescott’s Armenian colleague. If you try to imagine this, you can imagine also the difference between Armenia and England and also how much Prescott can be surprised. By the way, foreigners are surprised at many things but they don’t show their surprise. For instance, how can it be that in 2006 according to “Transparency International” most part of the society thought that corruption was widespread in the government and then they elected the same government during the elections of 2007, and now Aharon Adibekyan says that his surveys show that the governmental candidate will be elected in the first round. Now it is time to find out who surprises foreigners more: Aharon Adibekyan or the Armenian electorate? By the way, the Armenian voters can be surprised at foreigners too. For instance, bookmaker companies are accepting bets for the American presidential candidates and the rates of bet for the candidates don’t differ too much. Can you imagine any Armenian bookmaker estimating the opportunities of the government and opposition closely? It is impossible almost like it is impossible that Aharon Adibekyan says that the opposition has more opportunities to win or several tough businessmen announce that they will endorse the opposition. Such miracles can’t happen in Armenia. A question originates: why do the Armenian bookmakers accept bets for the American candidates but not for the Armenian candidates as well? It is worth mentioning that they accepted bets for the Georgian presidential elections too. For instance, the Armenian bookmakers don’t accept bets for the national team as it is a possibility that they may bet a lot of money on the competing team and lose the game purposely (they don’t need to make much efforts to lose the game as it is their style). As for elections, hardly such thing may happen during elections. In such case voters may think rationally and bet money on the government’s candidate and later vote for him to win money. If the mentioned candidate wins, both the undecided voter and the candidate will benefit. In such case it seems that the only party to lose is the bookmaker company, but there is a solution, according to which the candidate’s campaign headquarter may pay the prizes itself and leave some interest rates for the bookmaker company. It will be cheaper than giving electoral bribe. Plus, the monitors will not see anything and will not be surprised. The elections will be more interesting and passioned. There is some time till the elections and they can still do it…