RFE/RL on Presidential Election

RFE/RL’s veteran analyst, Liz Fuller, has provided a Q&A on tomorrow’s presidential election. Interestingly, and unlike the RFE/RL Yerevan Bureau, Fuller identifies three main contenders for the presidency.

Q: Claiming he is the only true challenger, Ter-Petrossian has expressed his anger with opposition candidate Artur Baghdasarian’s decision not to support him, and has said that Baghdasarian is essentially backing Sarkisian. Does Baghdasarian have a chance to make it to the second round in his own right?

A: I would say yes, he does have a chance. He’s the youngest candidate — he’s 39 — he’s charismatic, he’s populist. He’s made some very populist economic promises in terms of residing salaries and cutting taxes. The question is whether the authorities decide to go for broke and engineer and outcome in the first round that would preclude a second round; or whether they will finesse it and give Serzh Sarkisian just under 50 percent of the vote in the first round, in order to demonstrate that they are really being fair. In which case it would be very, very difficult to predict who the second candidate would be, whether it would be Baghdasarian or Ter-Petrossian, who apparently does have huge support.

[…]

Q: Do you expect the election to go to a second round?

A: I honestly would not like to predict at this stage. There was an opinion poll conducted I think last week, or the week before, by a British company, that gave Sarkisian marginally over 50 percent of the vote. And the margin of error is such that it’s very difficult to say. I would say it could go either way. Given that [in] the last two elections there has been a runoff, it would seem logical that there should be one this time round as well. Especially, as this time you have two strong challengers — you have Baghdasarian and Ter-Petrossian, rather than simply one.

A cynic would say that whether or not there is a second round would depend wholly on whether or not a second round would make an ultimate victory for Serzh Sarkisian appear more natural or convincing.”