Harmonic contradiction

22/04/2012 Ara GALOYAN

Everything is pretty harmonic. The nature is becoming active together with spring. The political life is becoming active with electoral competition. The Armenian media is full of coverage on the Armenian elections and the foreign media is full of information concerning elections in France, the US, Latin countries, etc. readers compare those processes as the economic basements are the same. Due to the international crisis in all countries that are setting foot in elections economic issues are top priorities. The presidential candidates of France, the US and the leaders of our parties are speaking of the same issues. During all meeting with voters all party leaders are promising jobs. The reason is the fact that due to the crisis in Western countries the unemployment rate is extremely high. In the US the unemployment rate has reached 8-9%. In other countries the situation is worse. According to official information, in Spain the unemployment rate of people that can work is 24%. The youth in France has got used to the idea that they will not have the social living conditions level as their parents. Accordingly, in all countries candidates that want to attract votes are promising jobs. This is where the similarity ends. Politicians spread out promises everywhere, but in the West there are mechanisms that prevent them from giving fake promises. That is the reason that western candidates do not give promises like our candidates and their speeches contain thorough analysis. They have to publish analysis with specific information how many jobs in every sector they can create because in parallel with their promises experts’ independent publications are made too. The World Bank recently published the economic expectations from this and next year. The situation is not good yet as the crisis will not be overcome. The US economic growth rate is less than expected. In EU countries it will not be able to prevent economic recession this year. Following the earthquake the Japanese economy has become slow too. Notwithstanding all these things, our government assures that our economy will continue growing. This is written in the budget law 2012 too. The economic growth is estimated at 4,2%. However, the main topic of the pre-election campaign continues to be creation of jobs. It is a normal thing that they may promise and fail to do because there have been such promises too, such as the promise for a new railway with Iran, atomic station etc. However, one thing has changed in elections in Armenia. During the past elections all slogans were calling on people to elect them, like they would work together to build a better state. Now people don’t believe in such simple promises. In twenty years nobody did anything to build a country that we are dreaming of. Nobody believes that they will build a country we are dreaming of, thus political powers are promising jobs. They say that jobs will help them live better and prevent emigration. Neither of the political powers has refused the idea of campaigning on the feelings of families suffered from emigration. Maybe it is true to morality is not a political category. Nobody is asking how many jobs and in which sectors they will open jobs. People have experience of fake promises. For example, several years ago the government promised villagers to help with seeds. They have not done it so far. The trick is that they are giving seeds to villagers in spring, and taking twice more in the fall. This is a kind of support that brings 100% profitability. Now voters are not attracted with such promises, thus political powers give promises “in cash”. An example is the government’s decision to give water to villagers till May 1. They don’t care if the large farms will benefit from it because small village economies will benefit too, and this is a large asset for elections. Maybe that is the reason there are less future promises during these elections. No time is remained and they will leave us alone after May 6.