Armenia’s switching to a pre-election mode is being fueled by the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) and, in particular, Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, who is likely to be the second candidate on the party’s slate at next year’s parliamentary polls, next to President Serzh Sargsyan.

Premier Sargsyan (no relation to the president) has chosen a seemingly win-win tactic – as the current prime minister, he relentlessly criticizes the situation in Armenia and states that the RPA, realizing all the flaws, is going to fix them – if it gets elected.

Experts note that thereby the prime minister deprives the opponents of the scope for criticism, as it is hard to criticize someone who admits his fault.

Speaking at the session of the Political Assembly of the European People’s Party in Brussels early last week, Sargsyan said that, for example, in today’s Armenia there is a gap between the declared values and the reality. He expressed hope that democratic reforms will help narrow this gap, saying that Armenia must speed up reform and institutional transformation. “The crisis has deepened poverty, led to the growth of external debt and inflation,” he emphasized.

Member of the main opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC) Zoya Tadevosyan believes that after statements in Brussels Sargsyan should have immediately resigned.

“If a senior official acknowledges that glaring iniquities are present in his country, it means that he does not control the situation,” said the oppositionist. She added that the head of the government simply said what others have been talking about for a long time in order to develop an image of a victim by means of confession.

Recently, Sargsyan has often reported on what has been done in the past several years. He says that a powerful institution of the ombudsman has been established, e-governance, e-tax reporting and a transparent mechanism for business registration have been introduced. Reforms are ongoing in the justice system, education, tax and customs administration, a new pension system is being formed. Besides, a program of developing export-oriented industries is being elaborated with the help of the World Bank.

At the same time, the premier does not address the most painful subjects that are of concern to society, in particular the deep oligarchic nature of the economy.

The World Bank estimates that Armenia has a potential to collect 240 billion drams (about $623.3 million) more in taxes. The draft budget for 2012 assumes an increase in the total tax burden by 101 billion drams (around $262 million). This means that the government is trying to get the economy out of the “shadow” gradually, without the so-called “shock therapy”, without hurting “the shadowy agents”. Most of the “shadow”, according to the estimation of international financial institutions, is concentrated in the mining industry. But the new law on mineral resources does not provide for an increase in environmental taxes.

Premier Sargsyan does not mention that for many years the sphere of information technologies has been declared a priority of Armenia’s economy, but its share in Armenia’s export does not increase. On the contrary, good programmers simply leave the country because in Armenia they have no conditions for equal competition.

The government likes to point out that in recent years Internet penetration in the country has increased manifold, etc., disregarding the fact that this is true on a global scale which naturally includes Armenia.

Anyway, it still remains unclear whether society will swallow this bait of the self-critical pre-election tactics or if the authorities will again need to resort to fraud to get votes.