Tractors against the background of the PAP campaign posters
Today the joints staff of the three political forces – the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), the Armenian National Congress (ANC) and the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) – convened a regular plenary meeting, at which various issues were discussed, but they didn’t discuss handing out tractors by Gagik Tsarukyan during his election campaign. Let us remind that as early as on April 20, in response to a question of www.aravot.am, Armen Rustamyan, an ARF Armenian Supreme Body representative, stated that that issue would certainly be a subject matter at the meeting of the joint staff. During a conversation with us, Hmayak Hovhannisyan, the president of the Union of Political Scientists who is included in the PAP list for proportional representation, said that no one had raised such an issue at the meeting and it hadn’t been discussed and if it had been, they would have discussed it with pleasure and readiness putting an end to, in his definition, “making use” of that issue. Hmayak Hovhannisyan found it worth to repeat explanations of his colleague from PAP Vartan Oskanian and explained handing out tractors in the pre-election period “in order to use and cultivate fertile arable lands that have not been used in our country lacking land and also in order not to impede farmers’ agricultural work.” “It is a project that is carried out in order to ensure spring sowing,” said Hovhannisyan.
In response to our question why it was done demonstratively, if the aim of handing out tractors was that “innocent” wish, why they were parked outside PAP election headquarters and handed over to the addressees in the framework of the election campaign, Hmayak Hovhannisyan said, “Because the time of the election campaign has coincided with the time of the spring sowing” and added, “I have offered the Heritage Party representatives to come and participate in the meetings and raise those issues many times and one shouldn’t make use of that issue.” In response to our clarification that in that case, the statement of the ARF representative and not of the Heritage Party was at issue, he said that Hamlet Abrahamyan and Spartak Seyranyan from the ARF had participated in that day’s meeting, “Armen Rustamyan is busy with the election campaign and he didn’t participate in the meeting and perhaps that is the reason why that issue wasn’t raised. If the issue is raised at the upcoming
meeting, we will discuss it, it will be an absolutely right work style, an approach of a partner who is interested in joint work.” During a conversation with www.aravot.am, Stepan Safaryan, a representative of the Heritage Party, talking about the fact that even after adopting the provision concerning charity with some reservation, the joint staff had neglected that issue, said that it proved that that staff was engaged in imitations and also mocked, “They will discuss that issue after the election.”
Let us remind that today the OSCE ODIHR monitoring mission has published its second interim report, in which it asserted that “a business owned by Gagik Tsarukyan is distributing tractors in several provinces, de facto as part of the party’s campaign.
