Local election, national politics

Municipal elections took place in Yerevan on 31 May, “a local election driven by a national agenda”. Amidst claims of widespread fraud and intimidation, opposition leader and former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan called for protests.

As the first significant election to be held since last year’s bitterly disputed and highly controversial presidential vote, the conduct of the poll to determine Yerevan’s mayor should have provided the authorities with the sorely-needed opportunity to improve Armenia’s democratic credentials in the international arena. However, while a small team of European observers considered the municipal election to be “largely conducted in compliance with European standards,” local observers and analysts were not impressed.

Speaking to Osservatorio, Armenian National and International Studies (ACNIS) Director Richard Giragosian is one of many critical of the vote. “It was outrageous and yet another example of the systemic abuse and misuse of administrative resources, the power of incumbency in this country, and yet another lost opportunity for Armenia to actually turn the page after the 1 March fiasco. However, the real hypocrisy comes not from the Armenian government, but from the European observers who once again endorsed a fragrantly abusive election.”

Despite such opinions, however, one diplomatic source in Yerevan urges caution when considering the opinion of the observers from the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities by suggesting that critics wait until the final report is published.

Regardless, the stakes in the election were always going to be high. Although ostensibly a local election, the importance of the vote to determine who controls the economic and political heart of the country had already been heightened by the candidacy of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Armenia’s first president and leader of the main extra-parliamentary opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC). The coalition of over a dozen minor political parties supporting him considered the vote to be a “second-round” of last year’s presidential election.

The full article is available in English and Italian.