WHAT TACTICS WILL THE CANDIDATES CHOOSE?

Hayots Ashkharh
Dec 13 2007
Armenia

In our view the upcoming pre-election campaign promises to be not
only a debate between the personal qualities and political teams,
but also the collision of advocacy tactics.

The previous activity of the candidates, as well as their recent
speeches and announcements provide an opportunity to outline the
principal tactic schemes, that is going to be the guideline of most
of them.

a) Tactics of practical – working campaign.

Similar campaign is usually typical of either a President that has
once been elected, or the acting Prime Minister.

The summery of the already implemented work, the reason of the
belated promises, the indication of fresh gains – these are the main
peculiarities of the before mentioned advocacy tactics.

That is why in our view this is the tactics Prime Minister Serge
Sargsyan is guided by.

b) Front attack – savior’s tactics.

This method of campaign is typical of the revolutionary opposition
headed by L. Ter-Petrosyan, who considers baseless accusation and
heating up the pre-election atmosphere to be their pledge of success.

Similar tactics, which will partially be chosen by many other
candidates as well, is mainly aimed at gathering protestant electorate
around populist announcements.

c) A method of tour campaign.

It is aimed at politicizing the existing interest or nostalgia towards
the charismatic leader. The campaign conducted by Karen Demirchyan
in 1998 is a classical example of similar tactics. The same tactics
Stepan Demirchyan tried to conduct in 2003.

The "Clean" method of tour campaign won’t be raffled this time.

But some elements will be noticed in Artashes Geghamyan’s, Arthur
Baghdasaryan’s and Vahan Hovhannisyan’s arsenal.

d) Tactics of shifting the campaign into the plane of theoretical
philosophic issues.

In our view Vazgen Manukyan will mainly be guided by this method with
his rich fund of theoretical knowledge, as well as Aram Harutyunyan
and Arman Melikyan.

Because most of the presidential candidates are from the pro-opposition
camp, (to some extent) due to the activation of the before mentioned
tactics, by the efforts of the leader of Armenian Pan National
Movement, the pre-election campaign will turn into an anti-campaign
against the pro-governmental candidate. In such circumstances only
Serge Sargsyan and Vahan Hovhannisyan can provide a quiet campaign
without any concussions, but Levon Ter-Petrosyan will do his utmost
to aggravate the situation.

But the aggravation of the situation will be dangerous for Levon
Ter-Petrosyan as well. Not only because the overwhelming majority of
the people hates the ex-President and Armenian Pan National Movement,
but also because most of the voters don’t link the change of the
situation with the change of the authorities.

It is first of all conditioned by the strengthening of the process
of forming layers of society, due to which the specific gravity of
those who prefer the reformative-evolutionary way of changing the
situation to the revolutionary and radical methods, have grown. This
means the aggravation of the situation and the intentions to start
front attack can push the majority of the protestant electorate
towards the candidates representing the so called third pole.

Anyway it is evident that literate tactics will provide the
victory of the pro-governmental candidate, no matter what tactics
the pro-opposition candidates will apply – and by the way at the
first stage.