"They are carrying out their own election campaign with state funds." Armen Hovasapyan

Facebook post by RPA board member Armen Hovasapyan: “As we can see, the Republican Party of Armenia has stuck to the pre-election campaign with its entire team. Slowly but surely, they are bringing their agenda to life with a clear blueprint. In particular, all regional governors and regional deputies are “full” advertising the projects implemented through state programs, presenting them as an “unprecedented and nationwide” achievement (they present what was done with people’s taxes to the people themselves, as a gift). In essence, seven months before the elections, they are conducting their own pre-election campaign with state funds.

They constantly talk about asphalt, community lighting, “historical wheat,” and similar situational “achievements,” convincing people that they have supposedly “developed” the country, and moreover, that they are “going to make it a paradise.” The reality is that this government actually has a legitimacy problem, as it has completely failed its own election program, which says one thing but does the exact opposite.

In parallel with this, they are gradually tightening the noose, arresting or silencing all local government leaders through various methods, and openly persecuting opposition figures who may hinder their political programs. At the same time, they are trying to manipulate the public once again.

Nikol understands very well that the dose of the myth of “peace” is gradually losing its euphoric effect. He imagines that the excitement artificially created in August will be almost zero by June, the day of the elections. Therefore, he has already set the team to “pull” in the regions to convey to the people their preferred theses on the spot: “peace has come”, “the former ones came, there will be war”, “we will open the roads”, “we will bring wheat cheaply”, “you will trade with the Turks”, “we have been building the army for 1.5 years”, “the Russians are stupid”, “we are going to the EU”, “we will liberate the church” and other similar cheap claims.

"The logic of "Yerkir HZ" has become its main political narrative, whose primary goal is the dehumanization of society, apparently, somewhere deep down understands that a person with memory and reason — and I am convinced that there are many of them — sees very well where these are leading us and our country, so it is trying to accelerate the sterilization of people's memory as much as possible."