On December 12-15, 2010, the APR Group center conducted a sociological research to find out how the people of Yerevan relate to the first wave of dismissing officials, particularly the resignation of the former mayor and justice minister.
According to the results of the survey, 74.3% of the respondents support the dismissals, 16% don’t support this policy, and the others did not say anything. The people’s understanding about the president’s decision to fire the mayor differs from the general acceptance of the political situation. 81.7% of the respondents believe it was good of the president to dismiss the mayor, 14.7% think the president was wrong, and 3.6% refused to answer this question.
The respondents were asked what they think about the goals of these changes (the resignation and dismissals of officials). 37.7% of the respondents believe the goal of these dismissals is to make everybody follow the law, 20.6% think that this was a demonstration that they are serious, 20.6% think that this is a result of conflicts within the group of the authorities, and 16.9% believe that the goal is the strengthening of the president’s positions (rating). It is worth mentioning that most of the respondents want to believe that these actions were done for the purpose of making officials follow the law.
34% of the respondents fully believe, and 36.9% partially believe that with these actions the authorities have decided to fight against the violence. 11.6% partially don’t think so, and 17.1% don’t think that the authorities are serious in their attempts to bring everyone to under the law.
There are different and various types of violence committed by high rank officials. The respondents were also asked which of the three presidents have been the best to make everyone in the country obey the law and not to commit violence. The answers are the following:
Serzh Sargsyan 39.9%
Robert Kocharyan 23.4%
Levon Ter-Petrosyan 5.4%
All of them 2.9%
None 26.8%
No answer 1.5%
It is a fact that people dream of making our country a place where everyone respects the law. The survey also tried to find out what are the priority issues of the country in the current phase. Below are the answers in different groups:
· Employment: new vacancies
· Income: pension, higher salaries
· Protection of rights, rule of law, fair justice, reduction of corruption
· Solving social problems
· Peace and inner political stability
It is very strange that most of the respondents got angry when hearing the option that the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement may be a solution of problems. There were answers such as “they killed us with that thing”, “that issue is like a toy for them and they remember about it whenever they want”, “this issue cannot be solved and they raise it from time to time, what’s the goal?”
The survey also tried to find out who the main potential candidates for presidency are. The question was the following: “Who would you vote for if the presidential elections were to take place next Sunday?”
Below are the answers of respondents to this question:
Serzh Sargsyan 30.1%,
Gagik Tsarukyan 16.6%,
Raffi Hovhannisyan 9.8%,
Robert Kocharyan 5.1%,
Levon Ter-Petrosyan 3.5%,
Vahan Hovhannisyan 1.7%,
Vazgen Manukyan 1.2%,
Tigran Karapetyan 0.3%.
There were other names of politicians but the respondents did not select their names. 20.7% of the respondents said they were against everyone. It is worth mentioning that this precedent of 20.7% being against everybody is the biggest percentage so far.
The research was conducted by the APR Group research center among people over 18 in Yerevan. The method was telephone survey and covered 663 respondents, which provided 4% accuracy of the survey.
APR Group