According to the polls of the Armenian office of the Gallup International Association, as a result of the answers to a question “if the presidential election took place this Sunday, which politician you would vote for?” we have the following picture – Serzh Sargsyan, Gagik Tsarukyan, no one, Raffi Hovhannisyan, Levon Ter-Petrossian, Vartan Oskanian, Vahan Hovhannisyan, Artur Baghdasaryan etc.
As for whether these results reflected the sentiment existing in the Armenian society today, in the run-up to the presidential election, www.aravot.am tried to find out during a conversation with representatives of different political forces. Regarding the mentioned issue, Stepan Safaryan, the secretary of the Heritage Party, said the following during a conversation with us, “These are numbers, which have been gotten according to a certain methodology, as far as I now, when an open question is asked and a voter tells names. Those numbers reflect the whole society with its fears, disappointments and everything. Therefore, I wouldn’t say that it is the absolutely correct picture of the upcoming presidential election, that it reflects the real abilities of candidates, since political processes are not static and in such an imbalanced and indefinite situation, the picture may fundamentally change overnight. I will just take those results into account.”
In response to our request for clarification whether the data that the main rivals will be Serzh Sargsyan and Gagik Tsarukyan, S. Safaryan said the following, “I know that there are expectations that the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) will part from the Republican Party. However, I don’t have expectations that the PAP leader will become the president of the country.”
Garnik Margaryan, the leader of the Motherland and Dignity Party, stated that he had never believed and didn’t believe the Gallup data and one had to be Nostradamus to publish such data. Then he went into detail, “They are not aware of the situation in the Republic of
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Armenia, they just show a favorable approach. It is too early to talk about that, place candidates. I think it will be clearer at the end of November.”
Mr. Margaryan raises a question whether Serzh Sargsyan, Gagik Tsarukyan or Levon Ter-Petrossian have made official announcements about their nomination to talk about that.
As for what that favorable approach was, whether Mr. Margaryan meant the factor of currying favor with the government, Mr. Margaryan clarified, “It is not a matter of currying favor. There are further-reaching goals. Today the Armenian regime carries out the instructions of foreigners, they are not free, they don’t act independently and along with that, we can hear the assessments of the European Council, its institutions or Gallup as a result of those instructions. Whereas one should consider the words of the ordinary citizen. Try to carry out a survey among 1000 people and you will see that if not everyone, 990 people will say that they are against Serzh Sargsyan. You have put aside the objective barometer, the people, and consider made-up, artificial assessments – it is not acceptable for me.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
