Armenia’s Bloody Saturday

World Politics Review posts an analysis of what it calls the bloody clashes which shattered Armenia’s election deadlock. In a sense, and quite unlike local media in Armenia, the analysis takes the middle ground rather than the polarized view of events which appears to exist here.

On March 1, the conflict over the disputed outcome of last month’s presidential elections in Armenia turned deadly when riot police and Interior Ministry troops clashed with armed opposition demonstrators in the capital city. […] The incident apparently started with a police tracer bullet accidentally ricocheted and killed a demonstrator, enraging the protesters to attack the police.

The government responded to the melee by declaring a state of emergency in the capital and mobilizing the army to end the mass rallies that had characterized Yerevan since the losing candidates accused President Robert Kocharian of manipulating the results of the Feb. 19 election. They claimed that Kocharian […] resorted to buying votes, rigging ballots, and using government resources, such as the state-run media, to support the campaign of his preferred candidate, incumbent Prime Minister Serge Sarkisian.

[…]

Kocharian charged some protesters with attempting to launch a coup d’état. The president began his declaration of an emergency by announcing that “the self-nominated candidate Levon Ter-Petrosian […] took to illegal actions” by accumulating and transporting weapons and holding public marches without notifying the authorities.

[…]

Saying he hoped to limit further violence, Ter-Petrosian, then briefly under house arrest, called on the demonstrators to end public protests for the duration of the state of emergency. Most people appear to have heeded his appeal, as well as government threats, to stay at home, but scattered looting was reported. The New York Times noted the incongruity of the strong support for Ter-Petroisian among the looters: “‘I’m fighting for honesty,’ said a man in his 50s, holding a stolen beer in one hand and a lemon in the other.”

[…]

Somewhat ironically, a similar mass protest in 1998 compelled Ter-Petrosian, whose reelection in 1996 was also tainted by charges of irregularities, to resign as the country’s first freely elected president since Armenia regained independence in 1991. Critics recall his presidency as being marked by the repression of opposition parties and the death of at least one party activist held in police custody.

Ter-Petrosian has referred to the protests as a “democratic revolution.” Yet, his questionable past makes it difficult to characterize the current situation as another colored revolution such as those that occurred in several former Soviet republics during the 2003-2005 period.