Less Than A Week To Go
You know when it’s close to election day when you find yourself sitting in a restaurant with other foreign journalists. True, it was only two of them — the photo editor from EurasiaNet and the Regional Head of AFP — who had arrived in town for the 12 May vote, but it does make a difference when you see that others outside of Armenia are interested in events as they happen here.
You especially know it’s close to election day when you wonder if the four Americans sitting at the opposite table are also here because of the vote. Actually, it turned out that they weren’t, but anyway. Still, it has to be said that the international media are not as interested in this election as much as you might have thought.
Nobody is expecting post-election street protests to achieve anything if only because the opposition is divided. True, Impeachment, New Times and the Republic party managed to unite and held an impressive rally in Liberty Square last week, but let’s face it. As usual, the several thousand supporters who assembled were mainly middle aged people and pensioners.
These are not the guys that “democratic revolutions” are made of. Sure, youth movements such as Sksel a hope to be able to motivate youth to come out against the government, but their following too is small. This is especially the case when you consider the number of young people actually taking part in the youth activities of various political parties.
Nevertheless, if parties such as Orinats Yerkir and Heritage were to become part of a joint opposition attempt to protest any possible fraud during next weekend’s election things could be different. Both of these parties have a wide spectrum of supporters made up of young and old alike, especially in Yerevan. More importantly, their leaders have more credibility with educated voters.
Interestingly, Orinats Yerkir appears to be very successful in attracting the support of women, including students, and those people who should constitute the middle class in Armenia. It’s been said that Orinats Yerkir’s support is not too far behind the main pro-governmental parties — Prosperous Armenia and the Republican Party.
So far there is no clear indication of how little or how much support the “radical opposition” has. Indeed, many analysts have so far not mentioned any of these more aggressive parties interested only in regime change as being able to clear the five percent hurdle. Still, we’ll know more about that on election day itself, I suppose.
Comment by Onnik — May 7, 2007 @ 1:11 pm