Every political force that starts an election campaign in Armenia faces certain dilemmas – for example, what is more important to present programs or to make a show? What language to speak with the voter strictly academic or the language used by a clamorous woman selling greens? Should one explain to the voter how good he is or how bad the rival is? It is really a serious dilemma, because presenting programs in the academic language is boring and uninteresting and to curse the opponent in the slang is quite the opposite. At the end of the day, certainly, one can combine those two approaches. The question, therefore, is to what extent.
There is also another problem; since circa 1992 – i.e. 20 years ago – the opposition has been using the same assessments of the government in Armenia: “criminal regime”, “robbers,” “Mafiosi” etc. It is a different matter how such assessments are appropriate for a certain government, but one should pay attention to two facts – 1. Repetition may bore, 2. Nevertheless, the society has made certain civic progress for 20 years and the young part of it, in particular, can get more information than in 1990s.
In that regard, the opposition should probably explain the voters, along with criticism, what advantages it has over the ruling coalition. Those can be crystal clear moral and professional features of all people included in its own list, successful governing experience and in the end, proposed programs again. I don’t know, perhaps it is not that interesting for an ordinary voter under the burden of social concerns, but perhaps one can find the way of explaining the solution of the most difficult economic, political, educational and cultural problems in the language understandable for the people. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation, in particular has chosen this way of presenting itself to the voter. I like neither that party nor its programs, but its attitude toward the election campaign is worth respect. Although it seems too traditional and obsolete and doesn’t have brilliant ideas of political technology, that party’s proposals make the thinking part of the society use their brains. Even not agreeing with it, I think that the difficult problems we are facing can be solved not with “criminal-angel” combination, but through proposing a certain mechanism.
Generally, it would be very desirable, if all nine forces participating in the election campaign took that very path.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
