“The ones, who conduct polls also make money. If you are ordering polls you should send money too,” says the RPA deputy president Razmik Zohrabyan concerning the survey conducted by the Populus.
The British organization Populus appears in the Armenian society from elections to elections, and recently they published a survey report conducted recently. According to the results of this survey, 28% of the respondents said that if presidential elections were to take place the next Sunday, they would vote for the incumbent president. 10% of the respondents said that they would vote for the head of the Prosperous Armenia party Gagik Tsarukyan, and only 4% of the respondents said that they would vote for the opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan. However, in answer to the question which political party they would vote for, 26% of the respondents said that they would vote for Gagik Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia party. In contrast, only 21% are willing to vote for the president’s RPA party.
According to their official information, this survey was ordered by an organization named Armenia’s European Friends, which is registered in Brussels. The media has published information that this organization is somehow connected with the incumbent prime-minister Tigran Sargsyan. One week ago the prime-minister paid a short visit to Brussels and during this visit he met with the representatives of the mentioned organization and later it was approved by an official statement. According to the same survey, the prime-minster has only 1% chance to become president, but still it does not mean anything. Of course the PM could ask for 3-4% for his name, but he has sacrificed his reputation for the purpose of giving credibility to the results of the survey. The survey was directly conducted by the Armenian APSC organization. The mentioned organization from Brussels conducted a survey in Armenia through a local organization. It means that the order concerning Armenia was given by an organization connected with Armenia, and it was implemented by another organization from Armenia. Definitely they used the name of the British Populus company to give credibility to the results. By the way, following the presidential election 2008 the Populus immediately announced that Serzh Sargsyan had won the elections. It doesn’t matter how much these organizations try to convince the Armenian society that the results of their survey are credible, he past does not stand for that.
This is the first large-scale survey before the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. Or, it is the first one that gains the attention of the government so much. Of course, this will be followed by the opinions of many other organizations such as the renown Gallup, number one pro-government sociologist Aharon Adibekyan’s NGO, which will certainly announce that the RPA and Serzh Sargsyan have the biggest rating and opportunities to win elections. By the way, Aharon Adibekyan will not be late to publish his findings and we think that it will happen either in the end of this year or early next year.
This “information” published by the Populus has raised many questions and become a topic of discussions among the Armenian political circles. Politicians, especially the ones from the ruling RPA party are very suspicious about the comparative great numbers of rating given to the Prosperous Armenia party. Also, it is very strange that in parallel with this high rating of that party the party leader’s rating is rather low. Even the pro-government politicians told us that they are suspicious about the 28% given to Serzh Sargsyan and they see some tendencies here. The politicians who discuss this issue often forget that the ones who gave the order are from Armenia too and definitely they think that the Europeans have initiated this survey themselves. However, even in this case they came to the conclusion that they wanted to make Armenia understand certain things through this survey. According to pro-government “analysts”, by giving 10% given to Gagik Tsarukyan and 26% given to the RPA the Europeans attempted to show that he is an important figure in the Armenia political sector and make understand that there is no second candidate for presidency in Armenia yet. The RPA are trying to understand what game the West has prepared for Armenia, who don’t like the idea of prolonging the term of the Russian military bases in Armenia and Russia’s active role in the process of Karabakh conflict settlement. The West does not like the opposition either because the leader of the opposition criticized the international organizations in his recent speeches during rallies by saying that they fail to make efforts to make the Armenian government set the political prisoners free and develop democracy in the country. Maybe the West is sending a message to Ter-Petrosyan. Levon Zurabyan did not exclude such possibility during a phone conversation with us. He also said that such surveys are as much effective in our country as in Iraq during Sadam’s tenure. He believes people are afraid to speak the truth and says that he has relatives who have given up this sector because they say that if they publish the truth they will be subject to intimidation and pressure.
Besides the external factors they discussed the domestic factors as well, in particular they were wandering why Serzh Sargsyan’s rating is higher than the rating of his RPA party. There are different opinions about this issue. “If a leader is not higher than the political power, there will be a contradiction,” says R. Zohrabyan.
The coalition representatives believe that there is a tendency in it to show that Serzh Sargsyan can work it out without the RPA too. The RPA president is new in that party and many people believe he will try to stand higher than the party to have privileges. However, one thing is clear that in our country the survey results are published not for orienting the society but the vice versa, in order to change the attitudes of people. Even the RPA members say that they think so. “It is normal that such organizations work here, because it may somehow balance the society,” says R. Zohrabyan.