Ten days prior to the referendum the opposition gathered and petitioned people to boycott the referendum. The discussions on whether to vote “no” for it or boycott were over and they made a decision to boycott the referendum. And they will definitely choose the strategy of total boycott. This means that they will call their proxies and representatives from all polling stations back.
The official explanation of the opposition is the following: at first they wanted to make their campaign for “no” legal, but since the authorities prevented them from their official campaign they decided to boycott the referendum that was violated yet at the beginning of the campaign. The problem is that they have to make campaign for boycott too in order to make it effective, and this campaign will be prevented by the authorities too.
Anyway, the decision is made already, and oppositionists will have to go to the Marzes one more time to campaign for boycott. It is clear that this decision has both positive and negative things.
The positive thing is that at least the opposition has made a final decision and is unified; they have also announced their program for further activities. Those activities are to gather in Yerevan on November 27 and organize a strike. By the way, in case of campaigning for “no” (but not for boycott) the opposition would not be able to do anything because they would have to spread their powers in Marzes on the referendum day and the next day so as to be able to follow the voting procedures, their activities and voting calculation processes. In case of boycott they don’t have this kind of problem, because in this case they can concentrate their power in one place, for instance, in the Republic Square.
And the negative side is that in this case people in Marzes will not be protected and it will be easier for the authorities to make electoral violations. You can imagine this situation when the community head makes villagers vote “yes” for the Constitution but they go to polling stations and vote “no” secretly. On the other hand citizens of Marzes can’t organize boycott secretly, and even if they boycott the authorities will put pressure on them, so they have to obey the authorities. Besides that there is a political factor too. The constitutional referendum is a serious development in the country and by petitioning people to boycott the referendum the opposition actually petitions the public to be politically passive. From this point of view it would be better for the opposition to explain to people what kind of changes there were in the Constitutional Draft and petition them to take part in the referendum and vote “no” for it. People must know whom to follow and why to follow, they can’t follow people blindly. By the way, the same concerns those who make campaign for “yes” too. They don’t even try to explain to people which Articles in the Draft are good for our country to develop and get closer to Europe. They just petition people to go and vote for it smartly. The authorities know that people will express their complaints to them by voting “no” for the Constitutional Draft, and they do their best to hide problems from people so they favor them till November 27. They don’t even want to inform people that the price for gasoline will be increased starting from January 2006 if this decision is made already.
People shouldn’t blame the authorities for this situation. Russia has made a decision to sell gasoline to Armenia for the same prices that they sell, for example, to Australia. So why do they have to sell cheaper? We shouldn’t blame the authorities for this. We can blame the authorities for the fact that they refused to construct a pipe line to Armenia from Iran only by the order of Russia, or for their announcements concerning that Armenia is in blockade and can develop for more than a hundred years without getting rid of the blockade.
I wonder whether this one hundred years will start from January, 2006 or not.