THE MAJORITY HAS A CLEAR-CUT OPINION
Armen Tsatouryan

Hayots Ashkhar
Wednesday 27 February 2008

The minority has to admit its defeat

The radical opposition representatives who have been organizing
demonstrations and marches since February 20 were, during the
recent days, persistently advancing the absurd hypothesis as though
L. Ter-Petrosyan, with his 21 percent votes, is the "winning candidate"
of the RA presidential elections. As "evidence", they referred to
the crowded demonstrations and protest marches organized in the
capital city during the past week. Such "logic" helped overlook the
fact that the 21 percent received by L. Ter-Petrosyan made up around
351 thousand votes in numerical expression, whereas incumbent Prime
Minister Serge Sargsyan has received 862 thousand votes, i.e. 2.5
times more than the ex-President.

It turns out that persistently refusing to admit its defeat, the
minority is trying to change the ratio of forces, and this, as we
know, is in contravention of the Constitution and the laws of any
democratic state.

In civilized countries it doesn’t even occur to anyone to dispute
the election results, given such a big difference among the contenders.

Moreover, the defeated candidates do not absolutely start conversations
on such topics in order not to cut a foolish figure in public. It is
possible to find a lot of faults with the electoral system, but to
insist that it is capable of distorting the results 2.5 times means
to sign below a conclusion on one’s own inability to realize his guilt.

The fact that despite the difference recorded as a result of the
elections, they unconditionally become subject to dispute and that the
post-electoral become a tool vs. a goal, is unfortunately obtaining
the "force of tradition" in our reality. For a moment, it seemed to L.

Ter-Petrosyan that it was possible to gather several thousands of
people in the square and to overturn the situation throughout the
country. As to Arthur Baghdasaryan, he may gather around the same
number of proponents; however, this doesn’t imply the emergence of
another self-styled "winning candidate". Moreover, the activists of
the Armenian pan-National Movement and "Yerkrapah", as well as those
who work in Khachatour Soukysayan’s fair are enough for organizing
medium-scale demonstrations.

In fact, the aggressive minority, which has received 2.5 times
less votes, is trying to impose its will on the overwhelming
majority. Instead of being guided by the task of solving some problems
troubling us, such majority guides itself by the slogan "We’ll Win",
aiming to impose its will on the people. And if the goal is to win the
majority of the people, and the tool is the slogan "Levon-President",
the fact that their candidate was defeated in the elections is really
of trivial importance for people guided by such mentality.

This is probably the reason that the proponents of the Prime Minister
who ran for election with the slogan "Ahead, Armenia!" began to
realize that it was too early for them to return to routine work. And
realizing that, they also began organizing rallies throughout the
Republic, with the most recent one held yesterday in the Republican
Square. The February 26 rally showed the real place of the majority
in whose name statements are being made on the Theatrical Square.

The aggressiveness of the minority may also become "contagious"
for the majority and lead to serious confrontations. And the task
of the state is to prevent such incidents and rule out the endless
repetition of the nonsensical attempts aimed at inciting "revolutions",
something which L. Ter-Petrosyan’s proponents initiated and in which
they ultimately failed.