Democratization in Nagorno Karabakh
As the population of the self-declared Republic of Nagorno Karabakh prepares to go to the polls tomorrow, the Institute of War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) has an interesting article on the presidential race that will see a successor to the incumbent, Arkhady Ghukasian, elected. In particular, although most analysts believe that the result of tomorrow’s election is a foregone conclusion, IWPR is not so sure.
There are two favourites amongst the four candidates contesting the July 19 election for the leadership of Nagorny Karabakh. Both men come from within the governing elite but one is the official candidate while the other is positioning himself as a potential reformer.
Bako Saakian, head of Karabakh’s national security service, has the support of the main political parties in the local parliament as well as most of the government and the elite in Armenia. Masis Mailian serves as the unrecognised republic’s deputy foreign minister, but is gathering more support from circles outside government.
[…]
In a lively campaign, both main candidates have had the chance to present their views on television, although there have been no public debates. Both have toured Nagorny Karabakh and had public meetings with voters.
There have been no violent incidents but members of Mailian’s campaign team have complained that the government has been unfairly agitating on behalf of Saakian on Karabakh television.
Karabekian believes that, although he is not the official candidate, Mailian has a genuine chance of success.
What is most interesting for me, however, is the way in which faith in the democratic process there appears stronger than in Armenia. In the recent parliamentary election in Armenia, for example, few parties campaigned and even fewer spoke about specific issues. Instead, vote bribes on the part of pro-governmental forces, and threats of revolution from the radical opposition backed up by some of its supporters in civil society, instead defined the way things went here.
In an environment where few opposition forces, save perhaps for Heritage and Orinats Yerkir, offered any alternative to the present authorities it was no wonder that neither the electorate nor the international community rallied around them when they attempted to protest the outcome of the election. Actually, cynics would argue that the electorate didn’t even rally around them on election day by choosing to vote for them or by refusing vote bribes, but anyway.
In Karabakh, however, things appear to be different. Rather than resigning themselves to what they’re told is the inevitable or preparing themselves for revolution, some interesting internal analysis is being made by the Karabakh Armenians themselves.
“Some analysts say that there isn’t a real contest between the candidates and that the authorities of Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh have basically agreed who will be president and Masis Mailian is needed just as a sparring partner,” he said referring to Bako Saakian.
“That is primitive logic. If the elections are just a backdrop for the transfer of power from one representative of the elite to another, an echo of the coming change of power in Armenia, then the question has to be asked: why have the authorities played, to use chess terminology, such big pieces and why are the different officials and bureaucrats agitating on behalf of their own candidate, acting so nervously?”
Gegham Baghdasarian, independent member of parliament and editor of the independent newspaper Demo, agrees that not everything has been decided in advance.
“Even before the electoral campaign began some people and some forces maintained and are still stating that the elections were pre-determined and it’s already clear who will be the next president of the country,” Baghdasarian said on public television.
“A person must really despise his own people and hold a low opinion of it, about its mental and moral level, to say something like that. It’s you, us, who will decide this. So don’t believe these fairy tales and go to the elections, not as though you are doomed but with the will to be masters of your own fate, in the frame of mind that who gets elected really depends on you.”
Well, what can I say? If only such a mentality existed in Armenia rather than the defeatist attitude that pretty much defines every aspect of political life here. For example, I remember on the day after the 12 May parliamentary election a civil society activist met one of the OSCE/ODIHR Long Term Observers (LTOs) who I knew. “Thank you for your report on the election,” she said rather bitterly and sarcastically to the girl from Serbia. “Now I know that we shouldn’t count on the international community. We can only count on ourselves.”
Although candidates such as Heritage’s Raffi Hovannisian did try to convince the electorate of this very basic but important fact, it slipped the mind of most of those in the political and non-governmental organization field. And so, my response to this civil society activist was quite simple. “That was your mistake all along. You should have always counted on yourself and not expected someone else to come in and do it all for you. It’s a basic prerequisite for democratic elections.”
Anyway, I remember interviewing Georgi Petrosian, now the NKR Foreign Minister, a few years back, and especially his comments that democratic processes in Karabakh will always be more evolved than in Armenia. Of course, there’s a reason for that — the smaller size of the country, less resources to squander, the fact that it has something to prove to the international community, etc., but here’s hoping that tomorrow’s vote can continue Karabakh’s record of holding elections in a more democratic fashion than most other former Soviet Republics, including Armenia.
Petrosian even argued that democratization in Karabakh might possibly influence processes in Armenia for the better, but only the conduct of the vote tomorrow, and how it is reported here, will determine that. Of course, opposition activists and civil society activists will counter that Karabakh politics implanted here in the form of the President and Prime Minister have had an adverse effect instead, but anyway, here’s hoping that there can be some genuine process of democratization in one of the two Armenian republics.
Basically, it doesn’t matter who wins tomorrow’s election as long as the election is a step forward. If the population of Nagorno Karabakh accept the results and continue to have some kind of albeit limited faith in the democratic process then that’s fair enough for a Republic in its infancy. It’s also crucial in order for Karabakh to prove to the international community that it deserves official recognition of its independence from Azerbaijan. The full article is here.
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