An analyst with the Yerevan-based Armenian Center for National and International Studies told reporters that President Sargsyan’s re-election campaign is deftly seeking to paint the other presidential candidates as “light-weights” and unserious contenders.

Edgar Vardanyan said that while Sargsyan’s public relations team wasn’t employing negative campaign tactics as in 2008, nevertheless, they were adroitly crafting an “off-putting” public image of the other candidates.

Vardanyan argued that the government had no business manipulating the perceptions of the electorate and that the voters themselves should weigh the merits of each candidate.

While the analyst rated the chances of Sargsyan’s re-election a foregone conclusion, he said that anything was possible in politics.

“If there is even the slightest groundwork and tiny pockets of resistance, then there is the possibility that over time, even shortly, a real threat to the current regime will appear,” Vardanyan noted.

He argued that if Armenian society could organize itself and decides to back just one or two opposition candidates, then next month’s presidential election could be forced into a run-off.

Sargsyan cold be defeated, Vardanyan said, if the opposition rallies around one candidate in the run-off stage.