ARMENIAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN SPRINGS TO LIFE
By Rita Karapetian
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Jan 30 2008
UK
Former president emerges as serious contender in country’s upcoming
presidential poll.
Armenia’s election campaign, which officially began on January 21,
is proving far livelier than most people anticipated.
A few months ago, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian was regarded as the
only feasible candidate to replace Robert Kocharian as president of
the country after Armenians go to the polls on February 19.
However, with the return of former president Levon Ter-Petrosian to
the political stage, Sarkisian now faces a serious rival.
"If it weren’t for Ter-Petrosian’s political comeback, the election
campaign would be purely mechanical with a predetermined result,"
said Alexander Iskandarian, director of the Caucasus Media Institute
in Yerevan.
One of nine candidates contesting the poll, the former president
is presenting himself as the only real alternative to the current
governing elite.
"I bear responsibility for [President] Robert Kocharian’s and Serzh
Sarkisian coming to power, and I feel I must apologise to the nation,"
said Ter-Petrosian, in reference to his former proteges.
In an interview with a Russian newspaper, he said the Armenian
government had not responded to his accusations of abuse of power
and corruption, and this, he said, proved they were true.
Answering criticism over his performance during his own time in
office from 1991 to 1998, Ter-Petrosian said that in those years,
the country was suffering problems associated with the post-Soviet
transition and the war over Karabakh.
He accused his successors of derailing his own efforts to resolve the
Karabakh conflict, and said the peace plan now under consideration was
the same step-by-step scheme developed when he was in power, the only
new element being a plan for a referendum on the status of Karabakh.
While Ter-Petrosian does not have the backing of the entire opposition,
he has won the support of a number of parties. As well as his own
Armenian National Movement, he has secured the backing of Stepan
Demirchian of the People’s Party – Kocharian’s main challenger in the
last presidential election, held in 2003 – and former prime minister
Aram Sarkisian, who heads the Republic Party.
Even before the elections campaign began, the opposition complained
that the government was using its resources to back its preferred
candidate, Sarkisian. More than 1,500 Sarkisian campaign offices
have been set up across Armenia, and posters of him are everywhere,
even decorating government buildings in breach of the law.
Heghine Bisharian, deputy chairman of the opposition Orinats Yerkir
party, alleged that local government leaders and school and hospital
officials, had been instructed to secure a minimum of 70 per cent of
the vote for Sarkisian.
"We have evidence that some local heads have been trying to use their
powers to drum up support for the official candidate," said one of
the leaders of the Dashaktsutiun party Armen Rustamian. Although
Dashnaktsutiun supports the government, it is fielding its own
candidate in the election.
The opposition is especially unhappy about unbalanced coverage in
the electronic media.
Sarkisian receives a great deal of favourable coverage, with reports
about his work as prime minister as well as his campaign. Public
Television broadcast almost the whole of a speech he made at a meeting
in Yerevan’s Erebuni district.
Heghine Bisharian, deputy chairman of the opposition Orinats Yerkir
party, said Armenian television was now off-limits to government
critics. She told IWPR that commercial TV channels had refused to
sell airtime to former speaker Artur Baghdasarian, who leads the
Orinats Yerkir party.
"I don’t understand why private channels are passing up a legal
opportunity to earn money," said Bisharian.
However, the head of Armenian Public Television and Radio, Aleksan
Harutiunian, rejected allegations of biased coverage, saying that
his channel reports on all the candidates.
One problem is that while the news programmes on Public Television
and other channels do report on the various candidates, the general
tone of the coverage shows the opposition in a negative light.
In a bid to make up for his lack of positive coverage, Ter-Petrosian’s
team has begun to record his speeches on CD and hand out the discs
at meetings. According to Ter-Petrosian himself, this "information
revolution" has already reached half a million people and is continuing
to win him new supporters.
Stepan Safarian of Zharangutiun – or Heritage – a party that supports
neither of the two leading candidates, said that Ter-Petrosian’s
appeal was growing in the course of the campaign. By contrast,
"the persistent advertising of Serzh Sarkisian by the electronic
media only hurts his ratings", he said.
Political analyst Stepan Grigorian believes that although Sarkisian
still has a good chance of becoming president, he may lose legitimacy
through the manner in which he is elected.
It is a keen matter of debate whether the election will run to a
second round, which would happen if none of the candidates got 50
per cent of the vote.
Galust Sahakian, deputy head of the Republican Party, confidently
predicted that Sarkisian would score over 65 per cent in the first
round. Ter-Petrosian, meanwhile, is also saying he will win the
first round.
Some analysts say a second round is inevitable because of the high
number of candidates, while others say that the opposition vote will
be split many ways, which will give the advantage to Sarkisian.
Opposition parties are already expressing fears that the authorities
will try to rig the election.
"Any attempts to falsify the results will be detrimental to the
falsifiers themselves," said Aram Manukian of the Armenian National
Movement.
Sahakian insists it is in his candidate’s interest to have a democratic
election. "Otherwise, both the winning candidate and his team will
be damaged," he said.
Rita Karapetian is a correspondent for Noyan Topan news agency
in Yerevan.