The Armenian National Congress (ANC) comments on the results of the election
Levon Zurabyan, the ANC MP, commented on the Yerevan City Council election during a conversation with www.aravot.am today. He assured that they would fight to the finish.
In response to our question what methods they would use, whether they would hold rallies from time to time to keep the people “hot,” he said: “Methods are quite obvious. One should explain the truth to the people, one should unmask these people, and one should destroy the totalitarian control mechanism that this criminal oligarchic regime has created. They have involved almost 90% of the people in repression, control, and bribery they employ. All this should be revealed, one should work with the people, yes, organize protests, rallies and engage in both enlightening and political activities. In this country, elections are just an opportunity that should be seized by the resistance movement, should be seized by the opposition; the truth should be revealed to the people to free them of these criminal chains, these chains created by these gang leaders. Why do I say that the word ‘opposition’ should
not be used? Because the word ‘opposition’ can be used while talking about democratic countries, and in Armenia, unfortunately, there is no opposition. To be more exact, there are opposition forces that are controlled and manipulated by the government to create a democratic façade or are such forces that are not accepted by the government, are persecuted, because it is a resistance movement – a resistance movement against the government.” In response to our question why the government had given seats during the parliamentary election and hadn’t given seats during the city council election, if they were to decide it, Levon Zurabyan said: “That they gave us 7% is real testimony to the fact that the regime can write any number it wants with mathematical accuracy. Let me explain why they gave us 7%, although we had 30%-35% support. Because, you know, there was no difficulty for the regime to lower our percentage by some half percent, and we wouldn’t have been elected to the parliament. I mean, if they had given us 6.5%. Why did they give us 7? For a simple reason, because the international community clearly said to this government after 5 years of the Congress’s struggle that if the Congress was not elected to the parliament, they would not recognize the election as democratic. The government and the international community cut such deals. They claimed just that 7%, and the government gave that 7% to reinforce their legitimacy. And in this case, there was no international pressure, because local elections are not attached too much importance to by the international community. It is as simple as that. In reality, this government can write a made-up number for any party.” According to Levon Zurabyan, the government knows the weaknesses of all the citizens these days and is able to control them through carousels, pens of different colors, specially folded ballots. Levon Zurabyan assured that all mechanisms of control were outside polling places, and inside polling places, there were clear elections required by the international community. In response to our question whether, to be completely honest, passiveness during the presidential election hadn’t play a role in today’s results, Levon Zurabyan said: “Certainly, I accept it. I honestly accept that it played a role, and our passiveness was related to a very important issue, it was related to the fact that the Congress was in a crisis because of one-man parties. They would block any decision. We went for establishing our own movement as a party, but this transformation needed some time, and we actually joined the struggle in the process. Our first convention took place on April 13 when the campaign had started. I don’t try to justify in any way, because I know that no matter what we did, the regime had already made its political decision that the ANC was not to be in the city council.”
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