During a conversation with www.aravot.am, Karen Kocharyan, a political technologist, assessed the election campaign conducted by the political forces participating in the National Assembly election as “tiresome” and “uninteresting.” In r
esponse to our question whether it was a tiresome campaign, because the participants didn’t keep up with the speed or they understood that one could win an election or make achievements in Armenia not through election campaign or programs, PR and advertisement. “I don’t agree with you – it is also through advertisement and PR. Regardless of what we say – there is election bribery, they will falsify percentages etc. – and I am convinced now that they will not falsify, the election in Hrazdan showed and US Ambassador Heffern reasserted later that that kind of elections are ‘pure.’ If there is election fraud, it is not done through falsifying, brutal force, stealing ballot boxes, but either a few days before the election or 200m away from the polling station,” said Karen Kocharyan. He perceived that as normal and pointed out that the American election in 1960s, when, for example, before Kennedy was elected his father would call campaign headquarters and yell at the members why they hadn’t organized taking people to the polling stations. “Taking voters to polling stations by bus is normal, they say among us ‘Oh my god, they have taken them.’ Good for them, you organize too, it is an organizational issue and it is common around the world. So, the participants in the election are tired, not because they think that the election is predetermined – there is no such thing – but because they have a 22-25-year-old ‘wear’; the same politicians do the same things, they promise, take the MP seats, then promise again and so on.”
In response to a question whether anything had changed during the 10 days of the election campaign in terms of allocation of forces and possibilities of appearing in the National Assembly, the political technologist said, “Nothing has changed. I think only a minor thing has changed, which has not particularly noticed by anyone – I think the leader of the opposition has changed. When I said that for the first time, the ANC leader treated that enviously, but the ANC is to blame for that. The 10 days of the election campaign have shown that the Heritage Party is the leader of the opposition today, although before the election campaign everyone had been convinced that the leader of the opposition was the ANC.”
According to Karen Kocharyan’s observation, it is conditional not only on the “tiresomeness” of the ANC, but also on the disappointment of the potential voters with that force, which was caused also by its dialogue with the government. “Hmayak Hovhannisyan said at the time that the people were not a doggy that could be tied to one’s leg and one could untie it, when he wanted, or not, when he didn’t want it. He said the right thing – ‘serfs this way, serfs that way’ option couldn’t work and it is natural that it should have its impact and it had a strong impact, the result of which was the meeting of the ANC in Masis the other day, where there was no one and where, according to Levon Ter-Petrossian’s statement, they won the most votes in 2008. On the other hand, the ANC, nonetheless, did great work for the society in 2007-2008. What the ANC has done for the past 4 years was hard to imagine – awakening the people, breaking the atmosphere of fear, the possibility of expressing oneself freely, introducing liberal ideas in the society in terms of just mentality. However, it turned out that it didn’t withstand and incinerated. The ANC has done great work, but it is the reality today that the ANC doesn’t have neither the resource and nor the energy that it had,” political technologist Karen Kocharyan expressed this opinion.
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Naira MAMIKONYAN
