TOP FOR REPUBLICAN PARTY IS BOTTOM LEVEL FOR BARGAVACH HAYASTAN
Lragir.am
27 July 06
During the July 24 meeting of the activists of Bargavach Hayastan
Party (Prosperous Armenia) the leader of the political party Gagik
Tsarukyan announced that the party has 200 thousand members. It means
that if the Republicans say 25 percent in the election would be an
excellent result, for Bargavach Hayastan it would be a little more
than the minimum, in other words, a satisfactory result. The official
data of the Central Election Committee allow drawing such conclusions.
Bargavach Hayastan Party was registered three years ago. Over the
past year, when Gagik Tsarukyan became member of Bargavach Hayastan,
it became the party which has the most members in Armenia. If this
pace of membership continues, the political party will have about
400 thousand members, if the rate slows down twice, the party will
have 300 thousand members.
According to the data of the Central Election Committee, 1 184 724
people voted in the previous parliamentary election. Although it is
said that in the constitutional referendum in 2005 about 1.5 million
people voted, even the prime minister confessed that "they had overdone
it". At any rate, relying on the information of the government body,
the Central Election Committee, even if turnout in the parliamentary
election mounts to 1.7 million in 2007, getting the votes of all its
300 thousand members, Bargavach Hayastan will have 20 percent. And
if it has several thousand or several tens of thousand supporters,
it will easily outdo the Republican Party.
By the way, today the Republican Party has 30 thousand members,
and during the previous elections it "got" 280 thousand votes.
Presuming that the present administrative criminal resource has about
250 thousand supporters, why should Bargavach Hayastan not have half
as many? So, considering that in terms of finance Bargavach Hayastan
and the Republican Party are equal, in terms of the number of their
members they cannot be compared. The problem is how real the official
numbers published by the CEC after the voting in 2007 will be.
The political party which has most members in Armenia announced that
they will not falsify the results of the election and will not allow
others to falsify them. Other influential political parties have made
the same statement. It seems that in the absence of a multipolar
political sphere and a power pyramid electoral fraud will not be
easy. In this case 20-25 percent of the Republican Party forecast
by its leaders is becoming rather arguable. First, the criminal
will hardly have 250 thousand supporters in Armenia, plus the low
public approval rating of the republican. Second, the Republican
Party disagrees with this 20 percent and demands 40-50 percent,
which would push the most experienced falsifier into a rage.
ARAM ZAKARYAN