Gagik Tsarukyan’s “Prosperous Armenia” party clearly used his economic might to create a shining advert, infact one of the most inspiring political ads I have ever seen. With people going up in planes, flying over Armenia and sprinkling “prosperous dust” , watching as kind Mr Tsarukyan hugs kids. Clips from scientific institutions, and clips of the people turning over a new page in a giant history book. As well as a picture of skyscrapers appearing in Yerevan’s skyline ( probably as he is building most of them)

Really, what is Armenia when Gagik Tsarukyan is being overlayed with a picture of the bible. Set to a romantic song sang by popstars, this was really inspiring, but what was saddest is that it is created off the back of very shady means.

So the campaign season has kicked off, and as planned, the state television “H1″ has been providing 1 hours worth of advertisements daily. Each party gets 2 minutes free, but some are paying for more.

While I am not commenting on the content of the party manifestos, or endorsing anyone, I am simply going to make some notes on what I’ve seen and thought since watching them today.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post the adverts on youtube soon for our readers to see.

As per usual, the parties seem to be focusing far more on their leaders, pictures of them smiling, doing nice things in villages - and with little mention of actual party politics, this is common even in the UK though. My favourite so far has been the “Orinats Erkir” party, which recorded a remake of the Forsh song “Henc Ayspes El Aprum Enq”, and included clips of “workers” , “Teachers” and “businessmen” who all wanted to live in a country of law.

Raffi Hovhanissyan’s Heritage Party showed clips from it’s rally in a hotel, where Arto Tunjboyadjyan arrived with his band to sing for the crowd. I was surprised to see him mixing up in politics. Raffi’s team was pretty good, and included Larisa Alaverdyan, the first Armenian Human Rights Defender, who strongly criticised the authorities for the human rights record.

By far the sickliest was Tigran Karapetyan’s , “People’s Party” , it basically consisted with glorifying pictures of himself in church, then a blatant advertisement for his “ALM” tv company, showing clips of him taking a quality award in London. Quality for what, I wonder, as ALM tv is possibly one of the most harrowing things you may ever see.

I also found Aram Karapetyan’s “New Time’s” speech quite interesting, he has decided to use his free 2 minutes exposing the “irregularities” within various figures of the government. Very brave, if anything. Today he spoke about General Prosecutor Aghvan Hovsepyan and his bribes recieved from various oligarchs.

The “Impeachment” alliance directly attacks Kocharyan, Serj Sargsyan, and Gagik Tsarukyan, with pictures of them, and then a big red line through their faces, with a caption “Impeachment”.

Anyway, I appreciate these are hard to imagine without seeing the footage, but I will try to get some up soon. Still the problem remains that even the opposition parties are not convincing enough to make me feel that they could achieve much. Perhaps based on adverts, Orinats Yerkir showed the most promise, but we all know that means nothing until we see results.

Our Armenian Citizens certainly have a difficult decision to make.