Lawmaker: Authorities will not distribute money this time (video)
The Republicans do not like the activity of voters, the draft constitution needs some 700 000 votes to be adopted. Vahram Baghdasaryan, Head of the parliamentary faction of the ruling Republican Party (HHK), said during the parliamentary briefings on Friday, “If you want to know whether the Republicans are interested in adopting the amended constitutional, I must say that the threshold will not be very high.” However, all efforts will be useless of administrative resources are applied, the vast majority of officials are Republicans. If today the Republicans are in power, it means they head most of communities in the country. ARF-Dashnaktsutyun member Armen Rustamyan agrees that supporters of the Yes camp are concerned about inflated voter lists, they do not want to see the threshold artificially increased. “This time the vote will differ from the previous ones as other mechanisms will be applied here which will differ from those used in elections where every vote is important for the ruling party in order to keep its seats in parliament.” Mr Rustamyan says he would be glad if the No camp holds its campaign in such a way that it can complicate the activities of the Yes camp. “There will be no question relating to electoral fraud if guided by this logic,” he stressed. “You cannot convince [people],” said Aram Manukyan of the Armenian National Congress (HAK). “Republicans buy votes and inflate electoral lists to allow their supporters do their dirty work for them as they fear that "yes" votes will be outnumbered by "no" votes. They want to garner “yes” votes at the expense of our compatriots living in Los Angeles or additional ID cards. Let us imagine that there are 100 voters in Armenia. Half of them will vote for and the other half against the bill. Their concern is to have 120 votes instead of 100 and their target is the remaining 20 votes,” he said. The opposition lawmaker says the authorities have a serious problem today, they came to realize that they cannot rely on voters, even if they distribute money and bribe voters. “From my talks with farmers, public servants and other people I understood that even if they take money they will not say “yes” to the amended constitution." Mr Manukyan says the real number of eligible voters in Armenia corresponds with the number on the electoral lists but you can find few “yes” supporters among them. “All those who want can join me and visit villages to make sure that Yes camp has few supporters in the country. “
