Yesterday the ARF launched the pre-election campaign for the upcoming council elections of Yerevan in Moscow cinema house. Before the ARF people would gather in the hall, they showed a short film about Hrand Dink, the main idea of which was the following: “One more Armenian killed with the hand of the Turks.” There was a short scene about ex-president Robert Kocharyan, which was about a news program telling about some meeting in some city.
It is not quite clear what the connection is between the upcoming elections, the ARF and ex-president Kocharyan. In the beginning ARF board member, MP Armen Rustamyan came up with a speech and said, “First of all I’d like to make it clear to everyone that we are against the both extreme approaches and such approaches are to mislead the voters but not to serve for the real purpose of the elections. The first and the most important thing is the political significance of the elections and I think that it should be neither underestimated nor exaggerated and everyone should understand how these elections look like and what they are.” Logically the hint relating to underestimating concerns the government, and the one relating to exaggerating the role of the elections concerns the opposition. “The ones who are underestimating the role of these elections think that the role of these elections is so small that they are trying to introduce the issue as a very small, simple and local event. They think that this is about scavenging, solving local community problems, etc. However it is not a small issue. This is the responsibility of the city council but their functions are not limited with this only. If it was the same we would be satisfied with the same status Yerevan had before. It means that the reason for change is not only the things that the city council should do. The danger coming out of such approach is that they are trying to give small significance to this election and make it a small election with local significance,” said Armen Rustamyan concerning their ex-partners of the coalition and the upcoming elections. Concerning the ones who are exaggerating the role of the upcoming elections, i.e. the core opposition, Armen Rustamyan said, “We don’t agree with the policy of exaggerating the role of the upcoming elections and assuring that these elections are equal to national elections resulting in formation of new political power in the government, and we believe this is done for the purpose of misleading the voters. Yes, that’s true that as a result of these elections we will form new city administration but not new government. Everyone should understand that due to winning this race somebody will introduce it as a great victory and establish a new state within the state and say that after winning these elections the president will resign and they can easily take the power. It is not the way and if there is someone who thinks that this is the way it must be, I will say that they are trying to disorient the citizens of Yerevan. And if they are getting prepared for the elections like this, they will have problems. The danger is that with this action they will make people more disappointed. On the other hand, in order not to leave that much responsibility for the political parties they will try to provoke tension and conflicts again. These are the two extreme situations that we should escape from.”
Furthermore, Artsvik Minasyan, who is in the first place of the list, introduced his pre-election platform. His says that the architectural view of Yerevan is being deformed and changed, thus “the city administration office should clean the city of illegal constructions and get rid of rats”.
He promises to triple the budget of Yerevan municipality if their candidate wins. “The budget of the municipality is not transparent at all. If we win, we will entrust the control over the budget to the city councils and opposition members to make it transparent. We don’t have anything to hide or to be scared of. Let our opponent control our activities and the budget,” said A. Minasyan, however he did not specify which political power he thought would be their opposition. On the other hand, their ex-partners of the coalition can logically be potential opposition for the ARF.
The ARF representative also addressed the issue of limiting the rights of holding free rallies and demonstrations. He says that now this right of the Armenian citizens is limited much. The latter pledged that if he was elected, he would do his best not to let such unreasonable limitations of the people’s rights take place. “We will do our best to establish a free forum for free speech since according to the existing law, the mayor of Yerevan also will have the power of managing a police body in charge of protecting the civic order, thus we will guarantee that in such places of demonstrations there will be representatives both from the office of the mayor and the police, who will act only in conformance with the law. The ARF is in a difficult situation now because we have become opposition only recently and we really need time to make people understand what the ARF is like in the opposition in the 21st century,” he said.
Mr. Minasyan closed his speech with the following: “We are running to win, to form an ARF municipal administration, to form a municipal administration, where morality, professionalism, respect to the society and state will be the highest values. Thus, let’s go forward to victory, let’s go forward to May 31!”