As I have already mentioned, criticizing the current authorities during the election campaigns will not be beneficial to the political forces. The only force to do that will be the RPA, since it doesn’t have anything left to lose and will be cursed at in any case. The other parties will hesitate to do that because they will fear to receive the label of “RPA in disguise.”
But some “critical agenda” is necessary; people enjoy listening to others getting verbally destroyed. The best target, in this case, is the RPA, towards which people have gathered a lot of bad energy. But other “enemies” are needed for the pre-election rhetoric, characters that are regarded negatively by at least some part of society, and that can be “played with” in this case.
Azerbaijanis and Turks cannot play this role because everything has already been said about them, and no one in Armenia has doubts about what they think. “Russia” and “the West” (the United States and Western Europe) are something else. It isn’t a coincidence that I put those two geographical locations in quotations. Those aren’t the real Russia and West, but characters that are part of the imaginations of many layers of society. The reality is richer, more complex, and doesn’t fit into stereotypes.
One of the negative characters of the campaigns could be Russia, which has allegedly “held us prisoner,” and whose claws Armenia needs to be saved from. The other “target of stereotypes” is the USA, whose representative, Bolton, was allegedly trying to make us give up Artsakh. Europe falls into the same “evil,” because it “naturally” wants to destroy the traditional Armenian family and strip us of our national identity. And some things can be said about the LGBT community that can have an effect on the campaigns- “this person is thinking about cleaning up our nation.”
Is it impossible to live without enemies and to not take advantage of traditional fears and difficulties during election campaigns? I think it’s possible. But then the campaigns will lose their “seasoning.”
Aram Abrahamyan
