Voting Begins — Really…
As mentioned yesterday, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D), one of two minor parties in a tripartite coalition governmen, is currently holding a nationwide vote on which of two senior party figures will be nominated as their candidate for next year’s presidential election in Armenia. Ironically, however, as RFE/RL reported last week, the vote is non-binding.
Spartak Seyranian, a senior party spokesman, told RFE/RL that voters across Armenia will be offered to go to polls from next Saturday through Wednesday to choose between Armen Rustamian and Vahan Hovannisian, two of the top Dashnaktsutyun leaders.
The two men, who hold senior positions in parliament, were shortlisted as potential presidential candidates during a party congress last September. The pro-establishment party is scheduled to hold another congress on November 30 to nominate one of them for the Armenian presidency by secret ballot.
Seyranian made it clear that Dashnaktsutyun delegates will not be bound by the outcome of the plebiscite, the first of its kind to be ever held in Armenia. “Naturally, it will have no legal force,” he said. “But it will be important for the party to present its candidates and to ascertain the public’s attitude to towards them.”
According to Seyranian, polling stations for the consultative vote will be located in special tents to be pitched in Yerevan and other parts of the country. There will be at least ten such tents in the Armenian capital, he said.
ARF-D Polling Booth, Arabkir District, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007
And it is uncertain whether the outcome of the “pleboscite” will have any impact at all on the final choice of the party. At just one booth erected to cater for the entire Arabkir district of Yerevan, ARF-D activists reported that only 300-500 people participated in the vote, which is scheduled to run until Thursday, daily. If such numbers are repeated throughout the city, whatever “voters” might decide could be considered largely irrelevant. Still, it was an interesting precedent even if voting was not secret.
Yet, although there were no signs of any coercion to vote for either of the two candidates, the RFE/RL article does point out one lingering concern. That is that the ARF-D will ultimately back the prime minister, Serzh Sarkisian, if the presidential election goes to a second round next February. According to RFE/RL’s Press Review, the choice of candidate for the historical party might well determine that.
“Zhamanak Yerevan” alleges that Dashnaktsutyun leader Vahan Hovannisian will be the presidential candidate of Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian if he is nominated by his party. “According to reliable sources, the prime minister is seriously lobbying Dashnak circles in support of his in-law Vahan Hovannisian,” claims the paper. It says Sarkisian wants to make sure Dashnaktsutyun supports him in the event of a run-off vote. The paper also claims that Hovannisian’s rapport with the other potential Dashnaktsutyun candidate, Armen Rustamian, is “extremely tense.”
In other news, RFE/RL also carries two more stories of note. In the first, opposition leader Artashes Geghamian has ruled out his support for former president, Levon Ter Petrosian, However, it is worth pointing out that Geghamian is no stranger to controversy with many accusing him of secretly collaborating with the authorities by urging his supporters to boycott the second round of the 2003 presidential election which secured the incumbent, Robert Kocharian, a second term in office.
Geghamian and senior members of his National Accord Party (AMK) fiercely attacked Ter-Petrosian as they officially nominated his presidential candidacy. The AMK leadership also significantly toned down its criticism of the Armenian government.
Risking more accusations of secret collaboration with the authorities, Geghamian revealed that he has meet with President Robert Kocharian and Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian recently to discuss the upcoming election.
[…]
Geghamian added that he has held face-to-face talks with Sarkisian and Kocharian “for the sake of Armenia’s stability.” “The key agreement reached [at the meetings] is that everything must be done to avert a destabilization of the situation in the country and prevent our centuries-old enemies, our neighbors from taking advantage of that,” he said.
[…]
With the AMK failing to win a single parliament seat in the May elections, Geghamian appears to have lost much of his popularity since 2003 and is not regarded by analysts as a major contender of the upcoming ballot.
In the second, members of the only two opposition parties with seats in the Armenian National Assembly, Orinats Yerkir and Heritage, have proposed new amendemts to the electoral code in order to prevent possible falsification in the vote. RFE/RL rightly reports that the outcome of the May parliamentary election was believed to be determined by vote-buying en masse as well as multiple voting. It is no wonder that such concerns have been raised again.
The package of 16 draft amendments jointly circulated by them is primarily directed against multiple voting and vote buying, practices which opposition leaders claim were instrumental in pro-government parties’ landslide victory in the May parliamentary elections. It includes two specific changes demanded by former President Levon Ter-Petrosian at a recent rally. Those envisage that all ballots for the vote will be printed in a European Union member state and that voters casting them will have their fingers marked by indelible ink.
Ter-Petrosian alleged that the Armenian authorities printed hundreds of thousands of extra ballots ahead of the May elections and bribed tens of thousands of people to vote for pro-government parties in more than one polling station. He urged the international community to pressure the Armenian authorities into enacting these changes.
“The experience of the last elections exposed the numerous ways of ensuring multiple voting by a single person,” said Vartan Khachatrian, a Zharangutyun parliament and co-sponsor of the draft legislation.
The authorities already rejected the idea of inking voters’ fingers a year ago and during the adoption of the most recent changes in the Election Code. They enacted instead a provision requiring election officials to put special stamps in the passports of Armenians going to the polls.
Interestingly, however, what the report doesn’t mention was that the main USAID-funded body for promoting democratic elections in Armenia, IFES, was one of the main forces against the inking of fingers. In a parliamentary session to discuss proposed changes to the electoral code before the May vote, for example, IFES’ Chief of Party, Ched Flego, presented a cheap widely-available chemical compound which could remove the ink as justification for not adopting the measure. Therefore it is not strictly fair to say that the government refused to adopt the measure on their own.
Regardless, one can only hope that the lessons learned from the May vote have been duly acknowledged this time and that the relevant steps will be implemented to prevent any repitition. Otherwise, with the vote less than three months away, what still remains the most burning question of all is whether opposition leader Raffi Hovannisian will lend his support to Ter Petrosian, and if the former president were to make it to the second round, would other opposition party leaders such as Vazgen Manukian and Artur Baghdasarian also support the former leader.
As one local businessman said today, if that were to happen, “it would be all over for Serzh [Sarkisian].” Time will tell.
ARF-D Polling Booth, Arabkir District, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007
- Published:
- 11.28.07 / 12am by Onnik
- Category:
- Armenia, Armenia Presidential Election 2008, Candidates, Parties, Photojournalism, USAID, Voting
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