Certainly, this is not about a former President of France, but about the region of Armenia. In the whole history of independent Armenia, people there have voted against the government, and, as a rule, that attitude manifested itself in the officially announced numbers. The reasons – at least in case of Gyumri – are more or less clear; the town that had a strong industry in the Soviet period became a town of the unemployed and homeless after the collapse of the system and earthquake, but even in that case, there is no justification for either the town or the central authorities’ keeping people in a “cab ghetto” for two decades with the poverty and crimes matching it. And apartments or even neighborhoods that have been built after the earthquake are mostly uncomfortable and besides, they were distributed much too unfairly. It seems to me that an important factor of discontent was having a mayor like Vardan Ghukasyan who combined false piety with the extreme lack of restraint shown by his relatives, his son, in particular. Besides, Gyumri has rather old revolutionary traditions – there were social democrat and Marxist clubs here as early as at the beginning of the 20th century – which stem from the existence of the labor class and the rebellious nature of the residents of Gyumri. All those phenomena added to each other create opposition sentiment, which manifests itself in both the voting and the ability of retaining the votes. Certainly, strong NGOs, the Shirak center and the Asparez club, in particular, which enjoy the earned authority among the citizens, are modern subjective positive factors. This is why the results of this presidential election in Gyumri, in particular, were such. Raffi Hovhannisyan’s person or his election campaign is of secondary importance here; if the expert in epic poems had been the alternative candidate, they would have voted for the expert in epic poems.
However, the good qualities that describe the residents of Gyumri can be attributed to the residents of the other regions of Armenia too. For example, the residents of Syunik have a proud nature, wonderful military traditions. Then why do they basically always vote for the government or if they don’t vote so, why can’t they retain their votes? Are they afraid of their governor? Certainly, it is there too. However, I think there is an objective reality, i.e. being close to the border, as a result of which they attach more importance to security than social welfare. And it, in turn, causes certain conservatism. What I want to say is that one should be more understanding, so to say, toward any results, regardless of whether we like them or not.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
