The subject “how parties prepare for the election” will be more topical in the upcoming months. I think around 10-15 political parties and alliances will participate in the upcoming parliamentary election. Everyone will certainly state that it will easily cross the 5% margin. However, it is obvious that only half of those 10-15 really believe that they will get to the parliament, and the other half will participate in the election for only one reason, in order not to be forgotten completely during the next 5 years and be interviewed from time to time. It is a good tactics and it is not condemnable at all.
Those who have a real ability to guarantee their seats in the National Assembly try to gather all their resources today. Everybody knows what the resources of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) are – that is the bureaucracy and all the state institutions, from kindergartens through ministries. There is no director of the school who will publicly state that he/she supports the Armenian National Congress (ANC) or the Heritage Party. If he/she did something like that, the school would find itself in such a bad condition that the director would be compelled to resign. Roughly the same resources, however, certainly to smaller extent, are used by the other two coalition parties. That mechanism has been actually operating since 1995. It is possible that the upcoming election will have some specificity – there is a possibility that the establishment will try to appear more or less “humanly” and will not show extremely rude and arrogant attitude, such as “we rule” kind of attitude, as it was before. The staff shifts that took place recently probably aim at that.
The opposition parties lack the above mentioned resources – they may rely exceptionally on the public activity. As in Armenia people who complain about their lives are a few times more than people who manage to make their living, the human resources of the oppositionists are huge. However, in reality how many of those complainers come to a rally and how many of those who come to a rally are ready to struggle with riggers as a trustee or a monitor during the election? It turns out that advantage in numbers is only apparent. ANC have managed to attract active youth for the past 4 years. They are probably not many, but if two thousand are gathered and given proper equipment to film, it is not ruled out that the establishment will avoid taking “decisive” steps during the voting.
The opposition resources will certainly be not enough for holding a free and fair election. However, hopefully using the resources in hand, as well as the establishment’s rather new position will not lead to the notorious “post-election processes”.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
