Hrant Margarian: I hope people will do the right choice this time and
vote for Vahan Hovhannesian

15.02.2008 14:20

Yerevan (Yerkir) – ARF Bureau member Hrant Margrian summarized the
campaign at a news conference held at the ARF Bureau office on February
15. "We prepared for this presidential election long ago," Margarian
said.

"We announced we would have our own candidate even before the National
Assembly election. Many people would doubt, but it is what happened.
The authorities included us in the government in exchange that we not
have our own presidential candidate, but we were able to convince them
that in civilized countries, parties included in the coalition
government can run separately in the elections.

We made the decision in our congress held in Karabakh and we nominated
two candidates. We were giving a fact of democracy to our people. We
were also trying to politicize the environment early. Ideological and
program struggle are our main weapons."

"We also held a popular vote to choose between those two candidates,"
Margarian went on saying. "This popular vote achieved its goal, and
helped us raise our ratings. We also took some steps that surprised
some people.

I can confirm that we were able to maintain the electorate we had in
the National Assembly election and we have added more people to that
electorate. We would have more supporters in this presidential election
if not for two conditions. First, the authorities did their best to
have a struggle in non-political atmosphere, on a level of slogans and
rallies.

This is proven by the fact that the TV was shut before the political
forces, and the people were deprived from being informed. In addition,
despite all our efforts to prevent the atmosphere from getting spoiled,
it actually is non-political now and is not based on ideologies.
However, I hope that our calls would be heeded and everybody would
become sober. And I hope that people will do the right choice this time
and vote for Vahan Hovhannesian."