SORTING THROUGH ARMENIA’S CONTESTED ELECTION
The Atlantic
Feb 21 2013
According to the official preliminary returns, Armenian President
Serzh Sarkisian won reelection for a second term in the February 18
election with 58.64 percent of the vote.
His closest challenger, U.S.-born former Foreign Minister and
opposition Zharangiutyun party chairman Raffi Hovannisian garnered
36.74 percent, followed by former Prime Minister Hrant Bagratian (2.15
percent), and Soviet-era dissident Paryur Hairikian (1.3 percent).
The remaining three candidates each polled less than 1 percent.
At a public meeting in Yerevan on February 19, Hovannisian rejected
the official figures, declaring that he is the legitimately elected
president. He publicly challenged Sarkisian to meet with him to discuss
the situation, and set a deadline of late afternoon on February 20
for Sarkisian to demonstrate the “strength and manliness” to admit
the outcome was rigged and to cede power “to the Armenian people.”
Sarkisian has agreed to meet with Hovannisian “at any time that
is convenient for him” in order to clarify Hovannisian’s “somewhat
incomprehensible” statements, according to Sarkisian’s press secretary,
Armen Arzumanian.
Ever since the two men seen as Sarkisian’s most serious potential
rivals — former President Levon Ter-Petrossian and Prosperous Armenia
party leader Gagik Tsarukian — announced in December that they would
not participate in the ballot, many Armenian observers have predicted
that Sarkisian would win reelection easily in the first round and
warned of the potential for fraud and ballot-stuffing that have marred
virtually every election over the past 20 years and destroyed many
voters’ faith in the possibility of a democratic ballot.
Opinion polls and forecasts by organizations and individual pundits
corroborated those predictions of an easy Sarkisian victory. A poll
by Gallup International predicted 68 percent support for Sarkisian,
compared with 24 percent for Hovannisian, while the Russian pollster
VTsIOM predicted 61 percent for the incumbent and 24 percent for
Hovannisian.
Precipitous Decline
By contrast, the European Friends of Armenia (EuFoA) registered a
precipitous decline in support for Sarkisian in the wake of the January
31 incident in which Hairikian was shot and wounded outside his home.
A poll conducted by the EuFoA in early February registered a 10
percent decline since January, from 68.6 percent to 58 percent, in
the number of voters who said they would vote for Sarkisian and a
similar increase, from 20.8 to 33 percent, in the number who planned
to vote for Hovannisian.
It should be borne in mind also that Sarkisian had to take into
account the official outcome of the 2008 ballot in which, according
to the Central Election Commission, he polled 52.86 percent of the
vote compared with 21.5 percent for Ter-Petrossian.
Insofar as Ter-Petrossian was regarded as a far more serious challenger
than Hovannisian in the current election, a vote of just 53-54 percent
for Sarkisian this time around would imply a decline in his popularity,
if one assumes that most of the estimated 80,000-90,000 voters who
have emigrated over the past five years in the hope of a better life
in exile were among those who voted for Ter-Petrossian in 2008.
By the same token, the official figure of 36.74 percent for Hovannisian
calls into question the accuracy of the 21.5 percent Ter-Petrossian
is said to have garnered in 2008, and which he never accepted as an
accurate or legitimate figure.
Ter-Petrossian has not yet publicly commented on the results of this
week’s election.
Nonetheless, parliament deputy Lyudmila Sarkisian (no relation to
Serzh), a member of Ter-Petrossian’s Armenian National Congress,
said she cannot believe that Hovannisian polled more votes than
Ter-Petrossian did five years ago.
According to the official returns, Hovannisian won more votes
than Sarkisian in three districts in Yerevan, Armenia’s second-
and third-largest cities of Gyumri and Vanadzor, as well as several
major towns.
Western-Style Campaign
There is likewise little way of determining whether and how many voters
cast their ballots for Hovannisian not because they wholeheartedly
endorsed his election program (which calls, among other things, for
the recognition by Armenia of Azerbaijan’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh
region as an independent state), but because they wanted, first and
foremost, to register their rejection of Sarkisian, and regarded
Hovannisian as the most palatable and credible alternative.
Hovannisian incurred Sarkisian’s ire by depicting the election campaign
as almost a Manichaean struggle between good and evil as exemplified by
“Raffi’s Armenia” and “Serzh’s Armenia.”
Similarly difficult to quantify is the impact of Hovannisian’s
Western-style campaign. Eschewing the mass rallies preferred by
Sarkisian, the engaging and articulate Hovannisian instead toured
various districts of Yerevan on foot, randomly greeting people in the
street, shops, and other public settings, shaking hands and handing
out his campaign booklets.
Laszlo Kemeny of the International Center for Electoral Systems
interpreted the election results as a vote of no confidence and a
wake-up call to Sarkisian.
Kemeny was quoted as telling journalists that “this was not a struggle
between two leaders; there is one leader here, but that state of
affairs is not eternal, and unless there are cardinal changes in the
socioeconomic life of the country, new figures do not appear in the
leadership and a redistribution of political forces does not take
place, then the authorities will get a ‘red card’ on top of this
‘yellow card.'”
Hovannisian did not say on February 19 what steps he planned to take
if Sarkisian ignored his ultimatum.
In an interview in late January, however, he made it clear that he
would seek to avoid at all costs a repeat of the violent postelection
confrontations in 2008 between angry Ter-Petrossian supporters and
police and security personnel in which 10 people died.
While stressing that he would not tolerate fraud, Hovannisian declared
at the same time that “I don’t want a bloody revolution…I am not
prepared to risk the life of any Armenian.” He said he would, however,
“do everything that the constitution and laws allow me.”
From: Baghdasarian
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/sorting-through-armenias-contested-election/273359/