WHAT LIMIT OF ELECTION FRAUD WILL UNITED STATES AND FRANCE DRAW?
Hakob Badalyan

Lragir
Oct 23 2007
Armenia

In some sense, Serge Sargsyan’s explanation is logical. He said it
is more expedient to prevent the soaring of prices, create favorable
social conditions and woo votes rather than to boost the prices,
accrue funds to buy people’s votes and cause social protest. On the
other hand, the prime minister must know that people are dissatisfied
not only with their social state. Moreover, the least dissatisfaction
is with the social state. The society is dissatisfied with injustice
in all the spheres of life in Armenia, which brings about innumerable
social, legal, moral, psychological consequences. In other words,
keeping the prices of food low is not enough to win over voters,
and the prime minister knows it, so does the party he leads, and
so do its coalition and other partners. Consequently, it is more
effective to accrue money and buy people’s dissatisfaction with
money because quite a different logic starts working as soon as
a person is offered to sell his dissatisfaction at some thousands
of drams. Certainly, it is silly to accrue election funds through
causing social protest. But since Armenia is an ancient civilization,
the rules of modern civilization stop working here.

It is not known when the government will accrue the necessary funds.

Perhaps it will become known after Serge Sargsyan’s U.S.-French visit
when he will have made clear what efforts it will take him to be
president of Armenia. And the extent of this effort will depend on the
limit of election fraud that the United States and France will draw,
the quantitative and the qualitative limit of election fraud.

If this limit is reduced compared with 2007, it means more money
will be needed to give bigger election bribes. Besides, it will
be necessary to buy several other candidates who will surely sell
themselves out expensively, considering the soaring prices. It does
not mean the candidates are also food and they became expensive
in a chain reaction, especially that the international price of
candidates is the same. The problem is that a candidate is also human
and he also needs to buy food, and since food has become expensive,
they need to sell their candidacy, the only product they have, for
a good price to afford to pay their bills over the next five years,
until the next presidential election.

Meanwhile, the United States and France are hardly likely to pledge
support to Serge Sargsyan. Nothing of the kind has happened in any
election. It is another problem that the absence of an alternative to
the government candidate made the West and Russia maintain the status
quo in the Armenian government. It was done through the observation
of the election process, there was no predetermined decision. No
election of Armenia has been predetermined, even though different
activists swear the election was determined to justify their failure.

Hence, Serge Sargsyan will probably return from the west without clear
likelihood of support. Meanwhile, he should be thankful that during
his visit no Armenian member of parliament or official was attacked
in Las Vegas or at Moulin Rouge in Paris.