The announcements on appointing pre-election head and deputy of the RPA party six months before the parliamentary elections make people keep their breaths and wait to see what is going to happen in other parties.
Have the other active parties formed their pre-election headquarters and decided how to organize their campaigns? Several days ago high rank officials from the authorities resigned and announced that they would join the RPA pre-election headquarter to work on the campaign. We asked a number of parties what they were going to do to prepare for the elections and campaign. We were informed by the PA and LS parties that it was soon yet to speak about that and they had active political party headquarters in the regions, which would become their pre-election headquarters. In 2007 the head of the PA’s pre-election headquarter was the incumbent city construction minister Vardan Vardanyan and the head of the LS’s pre-election headquarter was Mher Shahgeldyan. The representatives of both these parties said that they did not exclude the possibility that the same people might lead their headquarters. Newly established Free Democrats political party is very active too. They informed us that they had established offices in the regions of Armenia, which will turn into pre-election headquarters before the elections. We were informed by the general secretary of the Free Democrats party Masis Ayvazyan that the coordinators of these chapters would be busy with developing and implementing the current policy of the party. “In fact we have developed the institutional capacity and any time we can announce about establishment of a pre-election headquarter,” said M. Ayvazyan. For your information, Alexander Arzumanyan, who is a member of this party, was the coordinator of Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s pre-election headquarter in 2008.
We received almost the same answer from the ARF and Heritage parties. Representative of the ARF general board Armen Rustamyan says that if the RPA has appointed head of the pre-election headquarter, it does not mean yet that the other parties should do the same now too. He also said jokingly, “You can be busy with the RPA, and we will be busy with our work.”
The opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s spokesman Armen Musinyan said to us that their offices and party was ready for elections at any time. ANC coordinator Levon Zurabyan said to the Radio Liberty that they had given instructions to all their offices and headquarters. “We have headquarters in all the regional divisions of the Soviet times. Those headquarters are making campaign, and they have been also instructed to be prepared for elections,” said Levon Zurabyan.
All parties are assuring that following every elections they start getting prepared for the next circle of elections. However, we wonder whether it is not soon to start forming pre-election headquarters six months prior to elections. According to RPA representative and MP Davit Harutyunyan, who is a co-author of the electoral code, the terms of pre-election activities and campaign are not limited and the law allows starting pre-election campaign following the formation of a new parliament. According to him, this is a European approach. The law only regulates the policies, according to which on the threshold of elections and during the campaign period parties should have equal opportunities for using state resources. For example, all parties should have the opportunity to campaign on public television on equal basis and show their campaign videos. We wonder if this action on part of the RPA cannot be viewed as a pressure on other political parties out of the pre-election campaign period. “No, it is not a pressure because normally all parties want to have many votes during elections, thus they act as they want within the limits permitted by the law,” said Davit Harutyunyan.
We wonder if this action of the RPA had a pre-election purpose or it is just a part of replacements and changes in the government. There are rumors that before the elections Serzh Sargsyan wants to remove the loyalists of former president Kocharyan. “I don’t know whose loyalists they are because whenever Kocharyan appointed people, Serzh Sargsyan was with him and knew people better. They worked together. Sargsyan knew people better than Kocharyan when he came to Yerevan,” says Aharon Adibekyan. According to him, there is tension within the coalition and all coalition powers have the feeling that they should not be the second one, thus they want to increase their role and influence in the government. According to the surveys and poles of Aharon Adibekyan, the RPA is always in the first place with significant difference. He explains these results with the fact that the heads of 600 communities out of 900 are RPA representatives or have been elected due to them. According to him, the LS has approximately 90 community heads. The LS has this number due to the fact that they recruited the incumbent community heads in their parties. The PA has approximately 75 community heads, and the ARF – 50. In consideration of this information Adibekyan assures that the RPA has better chances for elections. In addition, during elections the MPs elected under the majoritarian system have an important role as in addition to their campaign they also work for their parties. Why does the RPA hurry if it has powerful tools for succeeding in elections? No other parties have made such decision yet. However, Adibekyan believes it is not soon. He says that there have been elections when parties announced about appointing the head of their pre-election campaign headquarters nine months before elections.