Armenia in the pre-election period has turned into a real funny theater. The environment that drives Armenia to parliamentary elections is like laughing at their own people. One of the most discussed issues in the political agenda is the next parliament, which is becoming clear as the government representatives make announcements about people to be in the next parliament, sometimes there is leak of information from the authorities and even the media publishes names. All these discussions have one common thing, which is that in all discussions people are sure that the ruling RPA party is going to have majority in the next parliament. They mainly discuss technical issues, i.e. who will be included in the proportional lists, how may per cents of seats for the party, etc. In parallel with these discussions the Armenian statistics services published a report on the social and economic situation in the country, which writes that in 2008-2010 the level of poverty grew from 27.6% to 35.8%, and the level of extreme poverty (people who are in fact hungry) grew from 1.4% to 3%. We can continue with the official statistics reports, but the more we go deeper, the worse the situation gets. This is the information published by the official statistics, which usually is different than the real situation. This means that the authorities accept the fact that during their tenure the situation in the country has become very bad, there are more hungry and poor people now, and announce that they are going to have majority in the parliament. Such announcements are made in parallel with commitments and promises to organize and guarantee free and fair elections in Armenia. This can have only two explanations. Either the authorities take people for idiots, because only idiots can vote for a power that make them poorer, or the authorities mean that they will violate the elections without any noise and professionally not to generate too much of noise. This concerns not only the RPA but their coalition partner, the PA as well, which shares the responsibility for the processes equally. As for the LS, it is still in the coalition but has nothing to do with any processes or anything. This means that the authorities and the society are faced with two challenges that contradict each other. If the authorities (including the coalition team), win the elections, have majority in the parliament and convince the world that it was done according to “democratic standards”, we will be known in the world as “a genius nation”. Otherwise, the incumbent authorities will become minority, but in an environment of honored society.
