Geghamyans of 2013
The statistics of the votes in presidential election 2013 shows that Sargsyan was re-elected not so much due to electoral falsifications, multiple voting, disappearing stamps in passports and fraud but more due to inaction on the part of political powers and activists that have declared themselves opposition. In fact such inactivity may be considered criminal inactivity. Or, in Armenia this is called “cutting deals.”
Serzh Sargsyan received 861,160 votes, which is 58.64% of the total votes. Raffi Hovhannisyan received 539,672 votes, which is 36.75%. The difference between the numbers of votes received by Serzh Sargsyan and Raffi Hovhannisyan is 276,438. However, if we take into account the votes that went to the other five candidates and also the ballots that were marked invalid on purpose with different words and pictures on them, the difference will be 203,000 votes.
These are mere number but there are political processes behind these numbers, which usually have multiplicative effect. These numbers show that in case of opposition’s unity, even if electoral violations mechanisms were used to the fullest extent, the government would not be able to be reproduced. It is not about the pro-government candidates that participated in the election but the powers that failed to participate in elections.
By failure to take part in elections ANC, PA and ARF forfeited most of their seats in electoral committees to the government, as well spread the idea of the election being non-competitive.
If opposition powers were actively involved in elections, the government would not have majority in electoral committees. If they nominated proxies in polling stations, they would be able to prevent a part of violations. The government’s victory in the election was possible due to opposition powers, and mainly the active campaign of ANC. This was campaign that was targeted at disappointing people and making them to give up on the idea of going to vote.
We have written about this during the pre-election campaign and before it. The CEC’s published information on February 18 proved it. It came to prove that Serzh Sargsyan’s victory was possible due to Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Gagik Tsarukyan, ARF and electorates that were following them blindly.
