The parliamentary election campaign is coming to the end and now we see that it again proceeded in an environment that is characteristic to elections in Armenia. The most positive thing in this campaign was the comparative equal access and opportunity of political powers to the media and TV sector. As during the past elections, this time the main topic of pre-election campaign have been electoral violations, bribes and fight against such violations. This means that again we are setting foot in elections with the feeling that those will be violated again. This topic has been discussed so much and people psychologically are ready for violations and are waiting for electoral bribes. In pre-election periods usually political powers do not accuse others much as people don’t like it. For this reason even some pro-opposition activists are calling on people to take bribe and vote for the candidates they like. As political powers do not like speaking of bad things before elections, they even don’t say that electoral bribes consist of two sides – the government powers and people. It is a fact that notwithstanding how effective the government is, if the other side, i.e. voters oppose or fight against them, they will not be success and their system will stop working. This means that the integrity of elections, even if not equally, but still depends on both sides and participants of elections. On the one hand it depends on the authorities, and on the other hand – voters. This process includes participants such s activists, who represent the government powers, voters, who are the ones whose votes matter, and electoral commission members, proxies and election monitors. It is as nonsense to demand from the pro-government powers not to distribute electoral bribe as to demand from voters not to be participants in the process of electoral falsifications. Maybe the electoral violation mechanism was fully applied several months ago, but the money will be given out to voters during the coming two days. If the society really wants free and fair elections, they may at least make this happen with their behavior. Each of us should do our best to make this happen in order to have the right to criticize. This is a moral right that makes it happen.
