Manifestos, Press Conferences, & Domestic Observers

As the official start of the pre-election campaign for next month’s presidential election in Armenia draws closer, the first signs of a real political competition are starting to emerge. Yesterday, the first president of the Republic of Armenia, Levon Ter Petrosian, unveiled his campaign manifesto and while it has hardly set the world alight, some supportive of the former head of state are already offering their opinion on it. Nazarian is one of them.

There are quite a few ideas that I like;

- the elimination of certain taxes,

- eliminating the practice of taxing income before the revenues occur (this is an extremely stupid practice that the current administration uses),

- eliminating the state racket of collecting bribes and encouraging tax evasion (basically, the money flows into the pockets of the beaurocrats instead of the state coffers which necesitates taxation before revenue),

- expanding the duties and responsibilities of the CB board of directors to balance the CB chairman’s clout,

- providing harvest insurance mechanisms to the farmers (another excellent idea),

- eliminating capital investment taxation (taxing investments is really stupid if you want to encourage investments),

- enforce anti-trust laws to reduce monopolization of economic spheres that are not natural monopolies. This should encourage competition, add consumer surplus (consumers will get more value for their money), raise productivity and competitiveness in the global markets.

There are quite a few other good ideas, and some of my major concerns are addressed in the law and order section of the program.

Responding in the comments section of the same post, H adds his two cents.

I find it a very social programme that is, for people not for capitalist fat cats. Excellent.

Additionally I especially liked

- the grant mechanism for IT companies to encourage the IT.

- Encouragement and freedom to Trade Unions among other non gov institutions

- housing for homeless, poor and young couples.

- giving monetary gifts for every new born child.

- establishing government fund for students to study abroad

- establishment of professional army and annulling all the pre 2005 charges against people who avoided military service ( to bring people back home and decree corruption in army).

In general I got the impression that the aim is to cut the roots of corruption by eliminating the artificial an unnecessary rules and regulations. As well to encourage the population increase.

If he manages to get his message across to every household he will be the winner.

I expected some additional points such as decentralization of the government, opening the KGB archives and even abolishing the KGB, some health care policies that will root out the corruption in healthcare, abolishing the current illegal constitution.

For those of you that read Armenian, Nazarian points readers in the direction of a version for download in PDF format and it’s also available on the official Levon Ter Petrosian campaign web site. If anyone wants to leave their comments on the manifesto on this post, please do. The more the merrier, in fact, and part of the democratic process.

Meanwhile, I know that The Armenian Observer is also closely reading it and will post an entry on what Ter Petrosian is offering to the country. As Observer is somewhat skeptical of Ter Petrosian, his opinion will be very interesting to read. Despite his sometimes open dislike of the first president, when it counts, he can actually be quite neutral and objective.

[F]or a moment I felt inspired and elated. I felt, that it’s great after all, that Ter-Petrossian decided to come back - the political struggle has become so much more interesting by that. LTP is definitely much more charismatic and a better speaker then any of the politicians in the opposing camp - and today I felt for the first time ever, that he might actually have a chance of winning, because compared to him, Serge Sargsyan seems dull and weak to say the least.

On the face of it, of course, we can all expect lots of wonderful promises from every candidate and what remains to be seen is how each says they will achieve their goals, but more importantly, which of them the electorate will actually believe when it comes to voting day. RFE/RL reports that soon we’ll be able to compare it to the manifesto of another candidate, the ARF-D’s Vahan Hovannisian.

The campaign team of deputy parliament speaker Vahan Hovannisian discussed and approved on Tuesday the election manifesto of the presidential candidate of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun).

The Hovannisian campaign declined to immediately release the document. A Dashnaktsutyun spokesman, Spartak Seyranian, told RFE/RL that it needs to be endorsed by the party’s governing Supreme Body before being made public. The body was scheduled to meet later in the day.

[…]

Hovannisian disclosed the main points of his platform as he effectively kicked off his campaign on December 25. In what came as a novelty in Armenian politics, he offered to sign “contracts” with individual voters committing him to pursuing policies that would, lead among other things, to free elections and social justice.

According to Seyranian, about 70,000 Armenians have already signed such contracts carrying Hovannisian’s printed signature and titled “I am with Vahan.” He said Dashnaktsutyun expects tens of thousands of others to do so before election day. “It is logical for 99 percent of them to vote for Vahan Hovannisian,” added Seyranian.

Well, assuming that such contracts are actually genuine, it’s a clever way for sure to ascertain the number of votes Hovannisian should expect in the presidential election on 19 February. As for the novelty of such a move, bloggers and citizens such as Simon at Blogian and Observer were suitably impressed. The contracts followed a kind of pseudo-primaries type of vote to gauge public support for proposed ARF-D candidates.

Meanwhile, RFE/RL reports that Levon Ter Petrosian will finally hold a press conference on Friday and answer questions posed by journalists. There is no doubt that the meeting at the Marriott Armenia will be packed and it will be the first real test of his intellect in the face of some very awkward questions I’m sure the pro-governmental media will ask.

Ter-Petrosian, never known for his openness to the media, had last held a press conference in September 1997 as part of his efforts to drum up public support for an internationally sponsored plan to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The public relations campaign proved fruitless as he was forced to resign by key members of his cabinet, notably then Prime Minister Robert Kocharian, less than five months later.

Barring sporadic and brief conversations with journalists, Ter-Petrosian has avoided contacts with the media since then. He also kept an extremely low profile, rarely making public appearances.

Well, the pre-election campaign is pretty much starting off a week and a half early, but what probably matters as much is the technical preparations for the vote as well.

In related news, therefore, A1 Plus reports that the largest domestic election observation mission, It’s Your Choice, has been registered to monitor the vote. Along with candidate proxies, it will also be allowed to photograph and film inside polling stations.

A1 Plus also reports that the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) has reported that there will be 1,923 polling precincts for the vote. The official registration of candidates also has to take place by 21 January.