Lragir, Armenia
Jan 14 2008

IT IS NOT THE WINNER IN ELECTION WHO LEADS ARMENIA

It is pointless to compare which Armenian presidential election was
the richest in compromising materials or to find out in which
election the candidates set the record average daily personal amount
of denigrating their opponents. The comparison is meaningless because
even if 2008 were the calmest year in this respect, it would not
change anything since compromising materials and denigration are in
effect at present, and it does not matter that in 1996 or 2003 they
had cursed each other more badly. At any rate, the year 2008 will
affect voters. And the most painful thing about the election campaign
is that the curses, accusations, gossips, insults that the candidates
voice in accordance with their IQ score and degree of perversion are
true. In other words, whatever the candidates say, remind and accuse
of are absolutely true.

And the public who hear this `debate’ among the candidates and their
political teams know. They hear and once again or definitively become
convinced that there is not a clean candidate in the political sphere
of Armenia. However, there are also positive things about this
because it will crush the myths which unfortunately the Armenian
people believed at crucial times in their history. In other words,
they invariably took the desirable for the reality and then got
disappointed with both the desirable and the reality, in other words,
the survivors got disappointed. Meanwhile, the elimination of the
smallest myth can be considered as a ray of hope in the Armenian
history, although it should be noted that such rays of hope are few,
fatally few, therefore a considerable part of the history of
Armenians has mainly been dark.

If the myths are crushed at least in the political sphere, there is
hope that not only the form but also the contents of political
processes in Armenia will return to the reality and meet the demands
of the society. In this sense, it is positive that the political
forces running in the election to president are not sparing effort to
reveal one another at full. In the meantime, if they are revealed
fully, their positive sides will also be revealed which have been
overlooked over these years because it is impossible to sustain a
family on positive sides, let alone power. Therefore, the society
perhaps should wait patiently. As soon as everyone will have told
everyone what a bad thing one did in a certain year and place, it
will be the turn for everyone to tell everyone what good things one
did in a certain year and place. The time will come because the
candidates need to tell each other something. The problem is that
almost all of them are, directly or indirectly, saying something to
another other, they think a candidate running in the presidential
race is supposed to say something to one another or about one
another. In other words, if they say something to the society at all,
it is about the opponent by all means.

It seems to be the natural course of events, and is typical of all
the societies and political processes, especially if they do not have
lasting political and state traditions. However, someone is supposed
to establish traditions, because they did not become established in
other societies on their own. And perhaps the real winner of the
presidential election 2008 and all the following elections, and
generally any major political process in independent Armenia will be
the one who will establish a new political culture, and will
consistently and tenaciously protect their contribution upgrading it
to a tradition. In this case, it is absolutely unimportant who will
be the official president elect in 2008 because 16 years of the
independent history of Armenia showed that in Armenia the president
was a result, or rather the consequence of the reality that occurred
due to the quality of the political process, and unfortunately over
the past 16 years of independence it was not the presidents who led
Armenia, and since the same quality of the process persists before
the election 2008, at least until this moment, it is beyond doubt
that after 2008 the winner declared by the Central Election
Commission will not be the leader of Armenia.

HAKOB BADALYAN

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress