This summer is hot for political parties as well as there is tension among them. The pre-election processed have already started, especially in regional offices of parties.
Parties are improving their skills for attracting votes and are recruiting new members. One of such methods is man hunting, which has been activated this time too. Parties are recruiting not only new people, but are “hunting” fresh blood from other parties as well. In this situation the pro-governmental parties are working on their opponents and they recruit new people from the opposition by giving certain promises and commitments. However, as the pro-government parties are not respected, it is very difficult for them to recruit new supporters from the opposition and undecided constituencies. Even more, there are people that have several party tickets in their pockets. Even pro-government parties are stealing members from each other and mainly they are relying on respected and powerful people in separate communities. They are selecting people who can bring at least several supporters in their parties. From this prospective there is a competition between the main two political powers – the RPA and PA parties. Legal State is rivaling as well. The RPA’s position is more favorable as they have the administrative resources and definitely they think that due to their human and material resources they will be able to reach a good result during the upcoming elections. However, in the recent period there is some flow of members from the RPA to the PA. According tour sources from the government, PA president Gagik Tsarukyan has separated an open air meeting place in his park near his house, where he will negotiate on pre-election issues with his visitors. Such visitors also include PA members from the regions and Yerevan communities. They receive promises from the PA, including jobs at ministries, municipalities and other state institutions.
In this situation it seems that the coalition memo doesn’t work because they were supposed to support each other and not to rival in the elections separately and not to be counter-balance for the others coalition powers. Instead of this they are implementing an active hidden competition policy. In the political circles there are rumors that it is not excluded that many people from the RPA may resign and join the Legal State and PA parties. Both PA and LS members have made announcements that they will run in the parliamentary elections with separate lists. The impression is that everybody complains and is not satisfied with this situation, including businessmen, ministers, MPs and heads of departments. Certainly these people will not join the radical opposition but will look for an alternative within the pro-government powers.
There are publications in the media that many people resign from the RPA, especially from the RPA chapters of Arabkir and Avan communities. We asked about this from the head of the RPA’s organizational department Ruben Tadevosyan, who told us that the information we had was not true and it was not serious to think about that.
He says that the party lives and always people come and go. According to him, currently the RPA has approximately 135 thousand members. However, he could not say what quality changes have happened to their party since the parliamentary elections in 2007. As for the PA, they are still counting the number of their members. Since the elections in 2007 we have asked them for many times what is the number of their members, however they always aid that they were still counting the members. Before the parliamentary elections the PA announced that they had approximately 400 thousand members, but after they received almost the half number of votes, they started to relate to numbers more seriously. The spokesman of the PA Khachik Galstyan said that different groups had been joining their party but they did not know where those groups were coming from. We talked to both of the parties and they did not exclude the possibility that some of their people might join other parties.
We believe that the upcoming parliamentary elections will be very tense, and it will be a tense competition not only with the opposition, but within the pro-government powers as well. During the parliamentary elections in 2007 the opposition did not take part in the elections with all its potential. The opposition powers were suspicious to the LS and they thought that the LS was implementing a pro0government project by pretending to be opposition. Even though the opposition is stronger now, the competition will be tense within the government as well.
By the way, recently there were even rumors that approximately 40 youth NGO’s that used to endorse the RPA by becoming their member are going to resign and join even the LS because they feel cheated as the head of the youth branch of the party Karen Avagyan and several other responsible people have become so fat and full that they ignore their colleagues.
Many of them are surprised why the RPA leadership do not act against such behavior. Others say that Serzh Sargsyan simply does not want to waste the resources before the time and they believe that all political powers will do what the president wants before the elections.
Meanwhile, it is not excluded that Serzh Sargsyan agrees with such policy. It is hard to believe that the president is not informed of the processes that are happening in the country and may allow others to make tricks on the account of his future plans. On the other hand, it is more possible that with such policy the president is diversifying their resources for the purpose of attracting more votes also due to inner competition. Ultimately neither of these parties, including the PA and LS cannot guarantee that their pre-election platforms will not be written in the president’s administration or they may make pre-election lists without having the approval of the president’s administration.