2008 Presidential Election Monitor

Writing for the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor, RFE/RL’s Emil Danielyan sums up the state of play to date in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. In a nutshell, the opposition in Armenia doesn’t stand much of a chance in contesting the vote early next year unless it unites. However, divided and more preoccupied with petty rivalries, it is unable to decide on a common candidate and while some are arguing for the return of former president, Levon Ter Petrosian, to the political scene, it is unlikely that his candidacy would be welcomed by many in Armenia.

Armenia’s fragmented opposition, reeling from its crushing defeat in recent parliamentary elections, is looking to join forces ahead of the presidential ballot due early next year. Leaders of the country’s main opposition parties have begun consultations on the possibility of fielding a single presidential candidate. It is widely agreed that without a consolidation, they will stand no chance of scuttling a planned handover of power from President Robert Kocharian to his longtime chief lieutenant, Prime Minister Serge Sarkisian.

The lack of opposition unity was one of the reasons why political allies of Kocharian and Sarkisian grabbed the overwhelming majority of parliament seats in the May 12 elections. Only two opposition groups won a minor presence in the National Assembly. More than a dozen others failed to clear the 5% vote threshold for entering the legislature under the system of proportional representation. According to the government-controlled Central Election Commission (CEC), they won a cumulative 20% of the vote, a figure comparable to the tally of the main election winner, Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). Many other Armenians unhappy with their government were too confused by the abundance of opposition contenders to go to the polls in the first place.

Most opposition leaders admitted after the vote that their failure to form major electoral alliances was a serious blunder and pledged to try to correct it in time for the presidential race. Some of them called for an immediate start of multiparty negotiations on a single opposition candidate. The first known attempt at such negotiations was a July 26 meeting in a Yerevan restaurant among top representatives of a dozen or so opposition parties. Paruyr Hayrikian, a prominent Soviet-era dissident who initiated the gathering, said afterward that participants avoided discussing concrete candidacies and contented themselves with talking about the political situation in Armenia and ways of changing it. Virtually all of them have stated publicly that they are ready, in principle, to sacrifice their presidential ambitions for the sake of regime change.

Local observers, however, question the sincerity of such statements. This is particularly true for three opposition heavyweights who took part in the meeting: Stepan Demirchian, Artashes Geghamian, and Artur Baghdasarian. Demirchian and Geghamian were Kocharian’s main challengers in the last presidential election. Although their parties failed to win a single parliament seat, they may still decide to have another shot at the presidency. Baghdasarian, who was parliament speaker from 2003 to 2006, is even more unlikely to withdraw from the presidential race in favor of another oppositionist because, according to the CEC figures, no opposition party polled more votes than his Orinats Yerkir (Country of Law) party. Incidentally, a senior member of Orinats Yerkir, Hovannes Markarian, predicted on July 24 that there will at best be “two or three” opposition candidates in the running.

The restaurant meeting was boycotted by two other prominent opposition politicians, who had served as prime ministers in the past. One of them, Vazgen Manukian, has repeatedly announced his intention to run for president. The other, Aram Sarkisian (no relation to the prime minister), leads Armenia’s most radical opposition party, Hanrapetutiun (Republic), which makes no secret of its support for former President Levon Ter-Petrosian.

Danielyan goes on to explain that Ter Petrosian’s supporters argue that the first president of Armenia is the only political figure able to represent an alternative to Sarkisyan. Moreover, he is one of the few politicians in the country who could count on some Western support for his candidacy, especially when it comes to resolving the long-standing conflict with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Ironically, it was talk of a concessionary deal to end the now 19-year old conflict that saw him resign in 1998 after an internal revolt led by then defense minister Vazgen Sarkisyan and recently appointed prime minister, Robert Kocharian.

The key question is whether Ter-Petrosian is popular enough to return to power. Many Armenians still associate him with the severe socioeconomic hardship of the early 1990s, which followed the Soviet collapse and the onset of the war with Azerbaijan. As another newspaper, Aravot, which is edited by a former Ter-Petrosian press secretary, noted in a recent editorial, Ter-Petrosian may still be even more unpopular than Kocharian.

Given that the opposition Heritage party leader Raffi Hovannisian is unlikely to have the issue of his eligibility to run resolved, and that jealousy and animosity towards Orinats Yerkir leader Artur Baghdasarian from within some opposition parties as well as civil society remains high, the scenario of Kocharian passing on power to Sarkisyan looks the most likely. Even if Kocharian and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation–Dashnaktsutyun has not yet publicly endorsed his candidacy, a second candidate from within the government is hardly likely to be able to challenge or combat the administrative resources of the ruling Republican party.

Instead, Danielyan says it is possible that the ARF-D instead hopes to gain more government positions from Sarkisyan in the event of the election going to a second round.

[…] Sarkisian tried unsuccessfully to secure such an endorsement when he negotiated a new power-sharing deal with the pro-Kocharian nationalist party in the wake of the parliamentary elections. A top ARF leader, Armen Rustamian, reiterated on July 27 that the party will contest the presidential election with its own candidate.

Few believe that ARF’s candidate will be in a position to win the ballot. What he or she can do instead is to increase the likelihood of a run-off vote, which would force Sarkisian to again seek the ARF’s backing and perhaps offer it more government posts.

What’s interesting, however, is that even if an opposition candidate were to become the next president, it could hardly be considered “regime change” given that Sarkisyan’s Republican party would still control the National Assembly even if the pro-Kocharian Prosperous Armenia were to distance itself from the party of power. I also disagree with the notion that most Armenians were “too confused” with the number of opposition parties standing in the recent parliamentary election. To me it seemed like most [opposition] voters had lost faith in the political system, and for those that hadn’t, Orinats Yerkir and Heritage were the only opposition parties they did support in significant numbers

Basically, in my opinion, voter apathy and cynicism was as much the reason as the inability of most opposition parties to present a concrete political platform let alone represent an alternative to the present government. Of course, there were allegations of vote-buying as well, but such practices thrive on the first two explanations for the opposition’s failure in the election as well. It takes two to tango and there is an urgent need for mature political debate in Armenia as well as civic education aimed at Armenia’s present and future voters. We also need mature and intelligent candidates.

Anyway, the full article is here.