“You know what, I don’t claim that this election was clean, fair, it is not the issue here, but I raise another question, I can say that in the past, people would want such and such to be the president and a different person would become the president because of fraud. If they wanted this party to have higher percent, it would happen so. Now when I look at people, their votes, I don’t see that people, citizens wanted to vote for Raffi Hovhannisyan or Levon Ter-Petrossian, but their votes were maliciously taken away from them and given to the PAP or the Republican Party. I cannot notice such a thing,” Vazgen Manukyan, the leader of the National Democratic Union (NDU) and the chairman of the Public Council, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am.
He assured that all activities were closely monitored by the Council of Europe. In response to our observation that there was fraud during the parliamentary election, but international organizations didn’t record anything serious, Vazgen Manukyan said, “I noticed that if it had been clean, everything had been clean, there would have been a 2%-3% difference. However, you as a human being can also notice what is going on. Does it seem to you that the government took votes away from some small party in this election? People cast their votes for the PAP, did they have votes? Let us put aside election bribes and stuff – certainly it is a crime and I am against it, but people came of their own free will, took the money and voted for this or that one. And it didn’t occur to them that it would have been better, if this one had been elected, but, all the same, the election would have been rigged and this one would have been elected. In this sense, this election was really unique. If no money had been handed out in the last week of this election, the result would have been the same. The money had been used for years. I talk to people and they don’t say that they voted for the PAP for money. They say that they think Gagik Tsarukyan can rescue Armenia, he is powerful, he is kind and he is good.”
In response to our question whether it meant that the society had already been zombified, Vazgen Manukyan said, “It is the case, yes. When the society does the same thing all the time, it becomes like that. I would define it in the following manner – this year’s election corresponds to this year’s society. I wouldn’t like to blame the society, because the society has been driven to this. In 1995-96, it was full of desire to struggle for the truth, they cracked down on it. Then came year 1998, it is hard to say what happened in 1998, because in 1998, everything was mixed up, but afterwards, people had the same thing, they were disappointed, they gradually accepted it.”
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