Presidential Election Update

It almost feels like a confessional, but apologies to readers for not posting more regularly. However, to be honest, there isn’t really much to report apart from continuing speculation as to who might run in next year’s presidential election and who might not. Of course, the only other thing to add is that of those potential candidates who have declared that they will run, all of them appear convinced they will win by a landslide.

That also includes candidates who actually are not eligible to run. Breaking that predictable trend, however, is the Foreign Minister, Vartan Oskanian.

Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian indicated on Thursday that his participation in next year’s presidential elections is unlikely despite an opinion poll suggesting that he is the most popular of potential contenders.

Oskanian left indications last year that he is seriously considering joining the race to succeed President Robert Kocharian. That prompted speculation that he, rather than Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, is Kocharian’s preferred successor.

Speaking at a regular news conference, Oskanian was asked whether he has already made a decision. “Those who want to be candidates are already speaking out. The fact that I don’t speak out means that I am not a candidate,” he replied without elaborating.

Oskanian, who has served as foreign minister since 1998, added only that he still does not know what he will do after Kocharian completes his second and final term in office next March.

As Iranvunk is quoted in RFE/RL’s Press Review, this month appears to be the one where most of next year’s candidates will make their decisions known if they haven’t already. Former President Levon Ter Petrosian should decide by the end of the month, for example, and so if Oskanian is going to be a surprise candidate despite his ineligibility to run, we might see more signs of that too. Certainly some newspapers are not taking the Syrian-born diplomat at his word.

“Zhamanak Yerevan” claims that Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian may still run for president despite his statements made on Thursday. “Robert Kocharian is keeping Vartan Oskanian as an alternative to Serzh Sarkisian in case Serzh Sarkisian fails to clean up his image, by smiling to everyone, and prove that he is the one who deserves to be the sole government candidate in the presidential elections,” speculates the paper. “Or if he displays disobedience and if Kocharian has suspicions regarding his personality. This is perhaps another reason why Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian is going out of his way to live up to the trust placed in him and please everyone he comes across.”

True to form, the ruling Republican party maintains its confidence that Sarkisyan will win the election, and to date, few others appear to doubt them. Faced by an opposition that is unable to unite let alone gain the trust of the electorate, the extensive administrative resources available to Sarkisyan and the Republicans must seem daunting to anyone wanting to compete on a level playing ground. Perhaps rightly, they also don’t appear too concerned by the results of a recent opinion poll which puts Sarkisyan as the fourth most popular candidate.

They argue that the first and second places were occupied by politicians who do not meet the 10-year residency requirement for nomination.

Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian will cruise to a comfortable victory in next year’s presidential election, a leading member of his Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) predicted on Friday.

“Serzh Sarkisian has no alternative,” said Karen Karapetian, the leader of the HHK faction in parliament. “We will score a very convincing victory.”

Karapetian downplayed an opinion poll which found that the Armenian premier would have finished fourth if the presidential ballot had been held in July. “When be began our campaign for the [May] parliamentary elections our rating was also low. But thanks to our correctly organized work, the HHK got the largest number of votes,” he said.

[…]

Karapetian said that Sarkisian’s victory will be facilitated by the Armenian opposition’s anticipated failure to field a single presidential candidate. “I suppose that there will be four or five opposition candidates in the running,” he told a news conference. “This means that the entire opposition electorate will be split. This also means that not all opposition-minded people will vote for [opposition candidates.]”

None of which seems to perturb the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D), a member of the ruling coalition government who have a history of being at odds with Sarkisyan, but who lack any candidate of note who could contest the election in the opinion of many analysts and even Dashnak supporters. They maintain that they stand a chance while others contend that their declared intent to run against Sarkisyan is just a smokescreen or a ploy to gain more government positions from the prime minister.

Shahbazian argued that Dashnaktsutyun won more votes than any of the opposition parties that ran for parliament.

According to official vote results, the nationalist party got 12.8 percent of the vote, earning it 16 seats in the 131-member National Assembly. The Armenian opposition refused to recognize the election outcome, alleging serious fraud.

Sarkisian, who formed a new government after his party’s landslide election victory, agreed to let Dashnaktsutyun retain three of its four ministerial portfolios despite his failure to secure its endorsement of his presidential bid. Dashnaktsutyun also made it clear that it will not bear responsibility for the work of government ministries not headed by its members.

Some opposition leaders and media commentators have speculated that the Diaspora-linked party’s main mission is to “steal” votes from opposition presidential candidates and thereby facilitate Sarkisian’s victory.

Vazgen Manoukian, Opposition Rally, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2004

Some sense of a kind of political realism comes from one of Sarkisyan’s predecessors, opposition leader Vazgen Manukian who has unsuccessfully run for the presidency on many previous occasions. According to many people, Manukyan should have won the 1996 presidential elections when he was defeated by then president Levon Ter Petrosian in a vote which again was considered not to have met international standards. However, 11 years later, uncertainly surrounds a political figure now considered long in the tooth and one apparently isolated from the current opposition.

Vazgen Manukian, a veteran opposition politician, reaffirmed on Wednesday his decision to run in Armenia’s upcoming presidential election, despite his failure so far to win the backing of other opposition heavyweights.

“In Armenia, people have African wages, European prices of food and other consumer goods,” he said. “There is an elite within the state that has the right to engage in any form of business, both legal and illegal, and privileges, including the right to get away with murders. They are reciprocating all this by helping the authorities rig elections.”

[…]

The ex-premier has seen his popularity steadily decline over the past decade, garnering less than 1 percent of the last in the first round of the last presidential election held in 2003. So far no major opposition party except his National Democratic Union (AZhM) has voiced support for his presidential run.

Moreover, faced with a more attentive international community, the prime minister, Serzh Sarkisyan, appears to be taking his unofficial campaigning for the presidency as seriously as ever. Almost constantly on television and at high-profile events such as the recent Pan-Armenian Games, Sarkisyan is at least trying to appeal to the electorate through carefully stage managed opportunities. He is opening schools, rewarding representatives of the Diaspora for the opportunity to use the occasion for publicity purposes, and even visiting old political allies turned enemies with a smile.

[…] Serzh Sargsyan decided to visit Ashot Bleyan and congratulate him on the Day of Knowledge. This step was widely covered on television and caused bewilderment among the public at large.

[…]

[…] such an unprecedented step is a pre-election gimmick designed by the prime minister […]

Of course, this being Armenia, conspiracy theories abound in the Armenia Now article quoted admittedly out of context above, but all seem so absurd that one has to wonder whether the opposition here will ever get its act together, especially when Sarkisyan appears ready to “resolve” the problems facing the country in the few months left before the vote which will be held in February or March next year. He’s even increasing pensions despite saying that such a move was impossible when campaigning against parties who promised such initiatives during the May 2007 parliamentary election.

On the last day of summer Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan signed a government decision to increase pensions by 60 percent.

[…]

As recently as this spring, the Prime Minister himself during the parliamentary campaign criticized parties that promised to increase pensions to 30,000 drams ($89) within the next five years.

In May, when the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun talked of raising pensions, Sargsyan, in a public TV televised government meeting said:

“The pensions they promise… will they get them from heaven?! The unrealistic promises are only for gaining political dividends.” The PM went on to ask the chairman of the State Foundation for Social Security Vazgen Khachikyan to explain publicly why a drastic increase of pensions is not possible.

Four months later the impossible has been realized by the presumed next president.

Still, you have to hand it to him. To date, Sarkisyan seems to be the only politician taking next year’s election seriously. Possessing more charisma and charm than the incumbent president, Robert Kocharian, it’s no wonder that some international diplomatic circles seem unperturbed by his likely rise to the top. Saying all the right things about relations with Turkey as well as about resolution of the Karabakh conflict, a senior western diplomat in Yerevan last week told me that there is now measurable progress in terms of democratization in Armenia.

The country has been independent for only 16 years, she said, and the population don’t see any alternative in the opposition. Actually, for once, I had to agree. For now, at least, it seems unlikely that the 2008 presidential election will be “free and fair,” but unless something changes radically in the next few months, it will likely represent progress over previous votes. And to be honest, that’s all the international community expects from countries such as Armenia, especially when in other areas, the government here is doing almost everything expected of them.

Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisyan, Pan-Armenian Games Finale, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007