The public poll results made public by Gallup yesterday strangely got not a broad response from political forces. Either the results are in everyone’s interest, or, being not in their interest, they seem trustworthy. According to those results, it becomes clear, in particular, that besides three small parties, which, in many people’s opinion, were planted by the government to say bad things about the Armenian National Congress (ANC), the other political forces can struggle for appearing in the National Assembly.
According to that poll, as it was expected, the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) and the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) are in the “Premier League.” Perhaps there is a struggle between them on the apparatus, organizational and material levels, but they don’t speak against each other at least outwardly. Moreover, the PAP is in an advantageous position, also because the ANC doesn’t speak against it – it pins certain hopes on that party. I suppose Robert Kocharyan will make a public statement in the near future. He, in my opinion, will, as always, talk about how blossoming the economy was during his presidency and how bad the situation is today. He will probably say also how important conducting free and fair elections, not handing out election bribe and not using the administrative resource are. Former presidents are used to forgetting how elections were held during their rule. However, what the second president will say is not so important, as with what intonation he will express his thoughts. Given that, the PAP rhetoric will either become stronger or will remain the same.
According to the poll, the B-list parties are mainly opposition. Naturally, they mostly propagandize against the government, moreover, the ANC does it using the same language, as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), the National Democratic Union (NDU), the Constitutional Rights Union (CRU) used in 1990s against the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM) – “Young Turks,” “robbers,” “rogues,” “criminals” etc. The criticism of today’s ARF (as well as the Heritage Party) is more solid – I don’t know which path is more efficient. However, I can surely say that propagandizing against each other and hinting at “being bribed by the government” that the ANC, the ARF and the Heritage Party do is not efficient. Parties, which, according to Gallup’s poll, have 9, 5 and 3-percent ratings should not be engaged in “taking away votes” from each other, but, in my opinion, should make the citizens that are not yet determined more active.
It is obvious that the more oppositionists there are in the parliament, the better. By the way, as opposed to the lists, none of which I like, I am going to vote for the opposition (in this case, ANC) candidate through majoritarian representation. The government “was all out” to maintain that electoral system, so let them lose from it a bit.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
