Over the last few weeks, people I am completely unaware of have been appearing in the media, posing as the leaders of this or that party. We also publish information about the congresses of those parties.
Of course, it is the right of our citizens to establish political unions, and I do not see anything bad about that in and of itself. If people have mutual ideologies, then they should gather and speak out about their views and visions, even if the members of their political party can only be counted on one hand.
The only suspicious circumstance here is that those political parties are formed (or, in some cases, resurrected) a few weeks before the elections. Let’s be honest: it’s very unlikely that they will gather the types of masses that will enable them to get the necessary amount of votes to pass the threshold in a short amount of time. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that they are pursuing other goals. Let me categorize those goals.
- There may be groups of like-minded people who, although they realize that they have no chance in this election, also realize that the election campaign is a good opportunity to express their views, appear on TV or the Internet, perhaps for future political purposes. It is a normal phenomenon for people to submit political applications.
- A wealthy person decided to fund a group of people to satisfy their personal favors, as well as to perhaps fulfill childhood dreams. Relevant people also convinced those wealthy people that they are prominent politicians, and as soon as voters see their faces and hear their speeches, they will immediately fall into a political trance and secure 50+ percent of that party. Of course, this will not happen, but people will have jobs over these next few weeks. Let’s call this ‘temporary employment.’
- Finally, there can be ‘spoilers’: forces that are exerted by certain participants for two purposes. First, to reduce the number of votes cast by pretending to be ‘unique’ to the electorate (as in the 1996 Russian presidential elections where Lebed ‘took over’ some of the votes of the communist Zyuganov). The second goal is to increase the propaganda of a certain side. Suppose the government uses forces to ‘prove’ that Pashinyan is not to blame for the defeat in the war, and that the ‘former regime’ and generals are to blame.
Aram Abrahamyan
