Was hoping an international magazine would bite, but no interest unfortunately. Still, I guess I’m addicted albeit glad that save for a possible second round we won’t have to go through all of this for another five years. Really.

Ter-Petrossian is all about accusations, mudslinging and spewing hatred among the population without anything to back his claims up, and Baghdasarian isn’t too far off either. He lost it with me especially after his death threat accusations and he’s always been too much of a demagogue and populist for my liking.

So, yes, I think of all the candidates who actually injected a bit of democracy and respect for the electorate for this presidential election, it was the ARF-D and Vahan Hovannisian. However, I’m not sure that many more than a couple of hundred thousand will vote for him. On the other hand, I accompanied some Dashnak youth today out campaigning for Hovannisian and it was interesting to see how well received the leaflets were by interested voters.

http://blog.oneworld.am/2008/02/18/dashnak-youth-campaign-for-vahan-hovannisian/

That said, this doesn’t necessarily translate into votes, and I think both the pro-government and pro-opposition media here as well as some international outlets have done a great disservice to this election by concentrating only on Sargsyan and Ter-Petrossian. That’s not democracy and that’s not a level playing ground.

Regardless, full marks to the ARF-D and Hovannisian for taking this election seriously and with attempting to communicate with the electorate. However, I’m not sure that society is ready for such things. Still, they say that in democratic elections you never know how voters will cast their ballot until the last minute.

Have the undecided and cynical been convinced? Dunno, probably not, but let’s see.

I’m going to make a bold prediction here and say that in the case that falsifications are minimal, Vahan Hovhannisyan might actually get the most votes on February 9th with somewhere around 25% to 30%.