At 2 a.m. when these lines are being written, I don’t know yet what the results of the election are. There is no complete picture of its progress either. Nonetheless, one can make a few preliminary remarks.
1. Different government bodies haven’t managed to avoid manifold “traditional” violations of the law again, haven’t given up on the services of “local tough guys,” which naturally casts a shadow on the electoral process. The actions of the prosecutor’s office and the police will show how much organized and instructed from above those violations were; suspicion will rise, if they try to hush it up.
2. During the election campaign, the government didn’t put any limits on the information agencies – certainly, first of all TV channels – under its control to cover the election campaign of opposition candidates, taking a certain step toward the Western standard of ensuring equal opportunities. The government wasn’t engaged in propaganda against the opposition, which loosely manifested itself during the former presidential elections, in 2008, in particular.
3. Raffi Hovhannisyan is by no means a weak candidate; his presence was absolutely sufficient to guarantee a competitive election, his person and party are very popular among voters. Therefore, there was (is) no need for those who think of themselves as “opponents of the regime,” so to say, to belittle his political weight; in such cases, arrogance, jealousy, and particularly envy are not the best advisers. People really having an opposition mentality who are supporters of other candidates and political forces that didn’t participate in the election should have, if not supported, maintained neutrality and shouldn’t have blasted him.
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4. Raffi Hovhannisyan and Hrant Bagratyan should have started the organizational work, including fundraising, earlier, in order that each of them or at least both of them combined ensured the presence of their poll-watchers in 1988 polling stations. I think the opposition and “alternative” forces represented in the parliament shouldn’t have washed their hands of the election either and should have watched over the legitimacy of the voting. Or is that issue pushed to the sidelines, if one doesn’t have one’s “own” candidate?
A presidential election is not the end of life, and there is hope that those lessons will be taken into account in the near future.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
