Armenian Elections: Bloggers also Facing The Challenge of Choice

Despite rapid political developments and political campaign pouring onto the Armenian voter from all sides, many people haven’t yet made up their mind about which presidential candidate to support. The situation is similar offline – that is to say in real life, as well as online – in the virtual reality of Internet diaries. «Which is the right thing – having a stance, or not?», Christina is asking in her «One day…» blog, further explaining:

I can’t decide on my stance for the upcoming presidential elections. I want a change – but I don’t see anyone, who could show me – a regular person with mediocre abilities and feelings, the way to those changes.

Artashes Boyajyan has written a couple of really interesting posts, asking why would anybody want to vote for either Levon Ter-Petrossian or Serzh Sargsyan, after taking an unbiased look at the failures of both candidates during their time in power, when it comes to key state-building issues like:

1. building a democratic state, with institutional separation of powers and functional checks and balances;
2. establishing (in reality, not on paper) a basically fair and transparent system of economic regulations;
3. promoting the rule of law and the respect for dignity and essential rights of Armenian citizens.

An interesting attempt at portraying the pre-election scene in Armenia was undertaken by the Armenian Patchwork blog – publishing photos of various candidates’ posted political posters:

Political Posters© Photos by Anush Babajanyan, Yerevan, 2008
In his JLiving notes blog David Sand describes the pre-election race on television, mostly commenting on the newscasts of the Public TV of Armenia and remarking, that per his impression, all candidates are given equal attention. Continuing along these lines, the blogger writes:

Baghdasaryan’s campaign is rather colorful, he speaks a lot, although often on unrelated issues, keeps promising growth in pensions, incomes and other material goods. [] The fact, that such announcements are simply absurd, are perceived perhaps by only a few people. Geghamyan keeps throwing dirt at Ter-Petrossian, at the same time advertising his glorious anti-crises program less and less. Vahan Hovhannisyan’s speeches are boring, but perhaps some people find them interesting? [] Vazgen Manukyan’s speeches are very interesting, but obviously more then half of the voters do not understand him.
[]
The coverage of Ter-Petrossian’s campaign sounds more like а criminal newsreel. First some freedom-fighter was beaten[], yesterday was an even bigger brawl in Artashat with a rather contradictory coverage as to who initiated and who suffered from the fight.

Onnik Krikoryan keeps following the election trails, photographing all important rallies. His second blog – Armenian Election Monitor 2008 also features English language press and blog reviews, covering all aspects of election related developments. Last week Onnik Krikoryan posted about Serzh Sargsyan, Artur Baghdasaryan and Vahan Hovhannisyan rallies.

Photos by Onnik Krikoryan © Oneworld
Multimedia 2008
At any rate, there is still one week to go before the elections, and the undecided voters, still have time to make up their minds. As for now, Christina is calling on to everybody to be more reserved:

I don’t know, really don’t know… hatred and evil are clashing like waves in this little piece of land, and their rage is acquiring the force of a tempest. Hatred closes you eyes, puts your target in front of you and all your creative talents are wasted on efforts to destroy it. Spare those efforts…

The Armenian language version of this post is available at the Echannel.am along with its Audio variant, which will be broadcast by Radio Hay this Saturday.