Aravot, Armenia
Feb. 21, 2008
Taking reality into account
by Editor-in-Chief Aram Abrahamyan
The figures made public by [Armenia’s] Central Electoral Commission
yesterday [20 February] hardly reflect thereal choice of our people.
But even those official figures should make all the participants in
the election think again,especially four main candidates and their
teams. The authorities had built their propaganda on the thesis
that[opposition presidential candidate and former President Levon]
Ter-Petrosyan was not the key candidate of the oppositionand that he
would be the fourth or the fifth in the election.
[Passage omitted: Domestic and foreign organizations were asked to
carry out opinion polls to back this thesis]
This propaganda and the sociological mistake was based on the wrong
calculation in terms of political science thatTer-Petrosyan’s
electorate is a "furious" and marginal crowd, which cannot be too
large. That is why the state propagators would call him "the leader
of the Armenian Pan-National Movement [APNM]". They should stopusing
that label if they are smart enough, otherwise they should admit that
there are more than 350,000 APNM members in Armenia, which, I think,
is unpleasant for them. In terms of science and journalism, it is
more correct to call him"the leader of the opposition; 350,000 is a
significant figure in Armenia (I think this number was even
greater)and I think that so many people have voted [for Levon
Ter-Petrosyan] not because they love Levon or the APNM very muchbut
because they hoped to get rid of these authorities. Being a serious
person, [president-elect] Serzh Sargsyan should take this fact into
account and not listen to palace lackeys and criminal oligarchs who
say "boss, everyone iscrazy about you".
[Passage omitted: Similarly, Ter-Petrosyan should not listen to those
of his people who say that everybody is readyto stand for him because
at least half of the 850,000 votes that Sargsyan has received are
real.]
[Levon Ter-Petrosyan was the founder of the Armenian Pan-National
Movement which once was the governing party. It is now led by Ararat
Zurabyan. Armenia has a population of 3,200,000.]