Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
Feb 14 2008
Armenia: Rivals Up The Stakes
Two main contenders in presidential poll claim that government
employees are on their side.
By Naira Melkumian in Yerevan (CRS No. 431 14-Feb-08)
As the Armenian presidential contest heads towards the finishing
line, tensions are rising between supporters of the two leading
candidates, while the intentions of many voters remain unclear.
The official candidate, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, and the man
generally seen as his principal rival, former president Levon
Ter-Petrosian, are engaged in a contest of wills, each claiming that
the public is behind him.
Ter-Petrosian’s supporters have sought to undermine confidence in the
Sarkisian camp by claiming that many government officials are on
their side, while accusing the administration of pressuring employees
to back its favoured candidate.
It is difficult to judge what people’s real voting intentions are.
During a Ter-Petrosian rally in Yerevan on February 9, IWPR asked two
men and a woman standing to one side whether they supported the
former president. `We aren’t for anyone, we just came to look and
listen,’ replied one of them.
A few minutes later, they became less hesitant and volunteered the
information that in the district administration offices where they
work, their bosses noted down their passport details and instructed
them to vote for the government’s candidate or face losing their
jobs.
`How can we vote freely after that?’ asked the woman.
A member of staff at Armenia’s institute of archaeology and
ethnography said many people were choosing to keep their views to
themselves for fear of suffering the consequences.
`If people are asked, they may say that they are supporting the
official candidate whereas in actual fact they may support the other
candidate, Levon Ter-Petrosian,’ she said. `There is undoubtedly
fear, especially among people who have a business or a state-sector
job.’
Ahead of the February 19 ballot, several opinion polls suggest that
Sarkisian has a commanding lead over his two main opponents,
Ter-Petrosian and former speaker of parliament Artur Baghdasarian.
Supporters of the two latter candidates say that the pollsters are
not neutral, and that voters are afraid to express their real views.
The Ter-Petrosian campaign team says between 80 and 100 people have
suffered intimidation or lost their jobs for supporting the former
president, and is compiling a list of names of people who have been
punished in this fashion. These figures have not been confirmed
independently.
The authorities strongly deny these charges.
`We need only transparent elections that are fair and inspire
confidence,’ said Sarkisian, answering questions in parliament.
In the northern Lori region of Armenia, the governor heads the
pro-government Republican Party but is allowing staff working under
him to support the opposition.
Arman Musinian, Ter-Petrosian’s press secretary, said that this was a
rare exception to the general rule.
`There are some honest leaders within the state system who understand
that people have the right to express their will and make a free
choice,’ said Musinian.
Musinian said the Ter-Petrosian campaign headquarters constantly gets
visits from people who work for the government, both in national
ministries and local administrations.
`Sometimes these are high-ranking people,’ he said. `They ask for CDs
or other materials, and even offer their help, but they try to do it
surreptitiously because they are afraid of losing their jobs. These
people run into not thousands but tens of thousands.’
Ter-Petrosian has used his position as the first president of
independent Armenia to target state-sector employees.
In the first press conference he gave in the election campaign, he
predicted that the whole `state pyramid’ would collapse in the run-up
to the vote. His supporters also predicted that he would win public
backing from some state officials.
Ter-Petrosian has won some support from other political forces, for
example the Heritage Party of former foreign minister Raffi
Hovannisian and the New Times party of Aram Karapetyan.
He has also been backed by some senior members of the Yerkrapah
Union, Armenia’s largest veterans’ organisation. It too has close
ties to the government and the Republican Party. Ter-Petrosian was
publicly endorsed by the party’s branch in the northwestern region of
Shirak during a rally in the regional centre Gyumri.
His candidacy has in addition been endorsed by Test of Spirit, an
influential organisation uniting veterans of the Karabakh war. The
group is led by Sasun Mikaelian and Hakob Hakobian, both of them
members of the ruling Republican faction in parliament.
`We stand by our commander-in-chief with whom we waged and won the
fight for freedom in Artsakh [Karabakh],’ Mikaelian told a rally. `We
are loyal to him.’
The Republican party said on February 11 that the decision by
Mikaelian and Hakobian to back Ter-Petrosian was not a sign of
serious cracks emerging in the Sarkisian camp.
`We are not worried about mass defections because our team is very
strong, very stable, very powerful and you will see that once again
on February 19,’ party spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov told the A1plus
news website. `The behaviour of one or two party members cannot be
attributed to the whole party.’
There were some press reports that 300 members of the pro-government
Prosperous Armenia party had teamed up with Ter-Petrosian. However,
there has been no public declaration to this effect, and party
spokesman Baghdasar Mherian said only one person had left his party
in recent times, and that was for reasons that had nothing to do with
politics.
Samvel Nikoyan, spokesman for the Republican Party, said predictions
that the Ter-Petrosyan camp would draw off support from
pro-government forces had been proven empty.
`Time has shown that everything that was said was a propaganda
instrument, mere wishful thinking,’ said Nikoyan.
Larisa Alaverdian, a former human rights ombudsman who now represents
the Heritage Party in parliament, insists voters must be courageous
enough to make up their own minds who they want to vote for on
election day.
`If we want to build a law-based state, then we need to drive the
slave out of ourselves,’ she said. `It ought to be a matter of pride
for the state system if it contains people with different points of
view. Such viewpoints shouldn’t be reduced to `I love you’ or `I
don’t love you’, but should be articulated in a more civilised
manner.’
Naira Melkumian is a freelance journalist in Yerevan. Naira
Bulghadaryan, correspondent for ArmeniaNow Online and the Civil
Initiative Newspaper in Vanadzor, also contributed to this article.