In response to a question what the difference between this parliamentary election and the previous one had been and how active people had been on the internet, Tigran Kocharyan, an information security specialist, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am, “This parliamentary election differed from the previous one by the fact that, for example, network was not so developed 4-5 years ago, this time one could witness a boom on social networks and see a lot of stages and many people, a lot of party members were very actively involved in Facebook both as individuals and as party members.”
According to Kocharyan’s definition, debate culture or convincing people on the internet to vote for a certain party was at a very low level. In response to a question representatives of what force worked more active, passive, literate or unsuccessful, were engaged in anti-propaganda on the social networks, our interlocutor said, “The most active were the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), the Armenian National Congress (ANC) and the Heritage Party, but the latter two have been represented mainly by individuals and, for example, the RPA and the PAP also appeared as parties. I haven’t noticed the Rule of Law Party at all, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) was represented by individual MPs. The ARF and the Heritage Party were rather politically correct, the rest usually crossed the limits of civilized behavior.”
In response to a question whether the parliamentary election had reflected the chances of the political forces during the presidential election, Kocharyan said, “I think no, because people may predict with what political capital they can enter for the election. It is too early to see how many votes politicians will win during the presidential election, according to these very results, because people who voted for a particular party will not necessarily vote for that party’s leader in the presidential election.”
Commenting on a video spread on Facebook, in which children injured during the blast in Republic Square during the RPA rally on May 4 met Vartan Oskanian with balloons on the election day, Kocharyan said, “I think that move was quite normal, because children have the right to express their opinion. I think what Oskanian wrote on Facebook was not right, he’d better go to hospitals and see what the situation there is instead of that. Giving balloons is those children’s business and we have such a society that everyone can express his opinion or attitude toward a certain politician. It, as a phenomenon, is normal to me. It is a separate issue how nice or unpleasant it was.”
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