http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8993685&fsrc=RSSApr 11th 2007
From the Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire
Campaigning begins for a rigged electionCampaigning for Armenia’s parliamentary election, scheduled for May 12th, began officially on April 8th. The contest will be watched closely by foreign observers, as it could predetermine the fate of the country’s political leadership. Victory in the legislative election is seen as crucial to President Robert Kocharian’s apparent plan to hand over power to his most influential associate, Serzh Sarkisian, who became prime minister on April 4th following the death in office of premier Andranik Markarian. Mr Kocharian, in power since 1998, also seems keen to retain a key role in government after completing his second and final term in office early next year.
The president and Mr Sarkisian will therefore go to great lengths to ensure that the former Soviet republic’s parliament continues to be dominated by their political allies. The latter are tipped to grab the vast majority of parliament seats through a combination of vote-rigging, vote-buying and control of the media. For this reason, there is widespread scepticism about government assurances that the elections will put an end to Armenia’s post-Soviet history of electoral fraud.
By fair means or foulTwenty-eight parties and about two hundred individual candidates have filed for registration with the Central Election Commission to vie for 131 seats in Armenia’s National Assembly. Ninety of those seats will be up for grabs under the system of proportional representation, with the remaining 41 seats to be contested in nationwide constituencies on the first-past-the-post basis.
With credible opinion polls practically non-existent in the country, it is not easy to gauge the electoral chances of various contenders. Popularity alone will not guarantee success. In terms of ability to secure the largest number of votes, the clear frontrunner is the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). Nominally headed by Mr Markarian until his death, it has over the past year come increasingly under the control of Mr Sarkisian.
The HHK is a typical post-Soviet “party of power†mainly comprising senior government officials, civil servants, and wealthy business people dependent on government connections. It can wield enormous administrative resources, through control of the electoral process coupled with voter intimidation and heavy televised propaganda. The Armenian press has been awash with reports of local government chiefs being instructed by party bosses to earn the HHK a particular number of votes in their respective areas at any cost or risk dismissal. Accordingly, they have reportedly been forcing scores of public sector employees such as doctors and schoolteachers to join the governing party.
The HHK’s de facto takeover by Mr Sarkisian in mid-2006 has also meant that it now enjoys the crucial backing of most members of the country’s business elite. The so-called “oligarchs†often hold sway in a particular part of the country and are in a position to bully and/or bribe voters. Many of them already helped the HHK win the previous parliamentary elections that were judged to be undemocratic by Western observers. There are no indications that the HHK will be seeking to prevail by more legitimate means this time around. A strong HHK showing is vital for the realisation of Mr Sarkisian’s presidential ambitions.
Kocharian’s choiceThat Mr Sarkisian, widely regarded as Armenia’s second most powerful man, is Mr Kocharian’s preferred successor seems a given. Both men are natives of Nagorny-Karabakh who played a major role in the Armenian-populated disputed enclave’s 1991-1994 secessionist war with Azerbaijan. They have worked in tandem and jointly weathered many political storms since moving to top government positions in Yerevan in the late 1990s.
The question is just how strong Mr Kocharian would like his heir apparent to be. The 52-year-old president made it clear last December that he will not become “Armenia’s youngest pensioner†after leaving office, suggesting that he wants to continue to pull the government strings in some official capacity. There is mounting speculation that he is eying the post of prime minister. Whatever Mr Kocharian’s exact intentions, it is evident that he is trying to secure his political future by covertly sponsoring another election favourite: the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) of Gagik Tsarukian, the wealthiest of the local oligarchs.
The BHK launched its activities little more than a year ago and claims to have since recruited as many as 370,000 members, or 12% of the Armenian state’s population. The party is capitalising on its leader’s vast financial resources, which are being spent on distribution of agricultural relief, free medical aid, and other public services to large numbers of impoverished people. The aid, condemned as a wholesale buying of votes by opposition and even some HHK leaders, is earning Mr Tsarukian a populist appeal that should translate into solid voter support for his party on polling day. BHK supporters are too disillusioned with the traditional Armenian parties to care about a huge disparity between Mr Tsarukian’s conspicuous wealth and modest taxes levied from his businesses.
Expert opinion differs only on whether the BHK was set up as a counterweight to the governing HHK or as a powerful addition to the government camp. Despite occasional signs of friction and mutual jealousy, the two parties are unlikely to openly clash both during and in the wake of the May 12th vote. Furthermore, there is a conspiracy theory that they have already amicably divided most parliament seats between themselves and form a coalition government.
Divided oppositionThe BHK phenomenon makes it easier for the Kocharian-Sarkisian duo to prevent their political opponents from having a strong presence in the next Armenian parliament. Their task is further facilitated by the failure of Armenia’s leading opposition parties to form electoral alliances. Voters hostile to the government will have a hard time picking one of more than a dozen opposition contenders with virtually identical platforms. Many of them might therefore not bother to vote at all.
The three largest opposition parties are led by Mr Kocharian’s two main challengers in the 2003 presidential election, Stepan Demirchian and Artashes Geghamian, and former parliament speaker Artur Baghdasarian. The latter’s pro-Western Country of Law Party was forced out of the governing coalition in May 2006. All three opposition leaders feel that they are popular enough to do well on their own. Only Mr Demirchian has considered teaming up with several smaller opposition parties, notably the Republic Party of Aram Sarkisian (no relation to the defense minister), a former prime minister who is the regime’s most dangerous and uncompromising foe.
Those parties failed to reach agreement even among themselves, reportedly bickering over who should be the would-be bloc’s top leader. Only two of them, Republic and the Heritage Party of the US-born former Foreign Minister Raffi Hovannisian, stand a chance of clearing the 5% threshold for entering parliament under the proportional system. The Armenian opposition also failed to put into practice Republic’s idea of fielding common candidates in the 41 single-mandate electoral districts. The individual constituencies are usually swept by wealthy pro-government candidates, and this is likely to happen once again on May 12th.
With the election likely to follow an all too familiar pattern, there is a strong possibility of joint opposition demonstrations in Yerevan in the immediate aftermath of the polls. Whether or not the opposition can pull large crowds is a different matter. Its most recent attempt to topple the government with a campaign of street protests ended in failure in spring 2004.
Aid in the balanceThe US and the EU have repeatedly warned that a repeat of serious vote irregularities would be fraught with negative consequences for the Armenian authorities. The US, in particular, has tied provision of US$235 million in economic assistance to Armenia, promised under the Bush administration’s Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), to the proper conduct of the elections. But Washington will likely tread carefully now that Armenia and Azerbaijan seem to have made substantial progress towards a resolution of the Karabakh conflict, a key US foreign policy aim in the region. US and other diplomats involved in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks say the conflicting parties will try to cut a peace deal during the period between the Armenian legislative elections and presidential ballots due in both Armenia and Azerbaijan next year.
Assuming that it really sees a chance for Karabakh peace, Washington will hardly undercut the Kocharian administration if the polls are marred by serious fraud. The EU may likewise exercise caution, even though it has warned that a clean vote is a necessary condition for Armenia’s participation in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) framework for privileged ties with the bloc. Yet even the prospect of being left out of ENP or not receiving the badly needed MCA funds will hardly force Armenia’s two top leaders to finally hold an election according to Western standards—for them, far too much is at stake.
