ARMENIA: RULING PARTY SWEEPS ASIDE OPPOSITION
By Rita Karapetian in Yerevan
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK –
May 17 2007
Personal and political triumph for new prime minister.
The decisive victory of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, RPA,
in the May 12 parliamentary elections in Armenia, outperforming two
other pro-government parties, Prosperous Armenia and Dashnaktsutiun,
has bolstered the prospects of its leader, Prime Minister Serzh
Sarkisian, becoming the country’s next president.
Opposition politicians cried foul after the poll, after only five
parties in a field of 23 won seats in parliament. In fourth and fifth
place were Orinats Yerkir, a former member of the governing coalition,
which has now gone into opposition and Heritage, an opposition
party founded by Armenia’s first post-independence foreign minister,
US-born Raffi Hovannisian.
The opposition movements National Unity and Justice were awarded
only around four per cent and less than two per cent of the vote –
and won no seats.
International observers gave the elections their cautious endorsement,
thus securing millions of dollars of international funding that had
been contingent on the monitors’ recognition of the poll.
Ninety of the 131 seats were appointed on a proportional party list
system; the remainder on a constituency basis.
After securing around a third of the popular vote and a string of
constituency seats, the RPA gained 65 seats in parliament, leaving
it just one seat short of an overall majority. Prosperous Armenia
and Dashnaktsutiun won 26 and 16 seats respectively, Orinats Yerkir
ended up with ten and Heritage with seven.
Nine of the single-constituency seats went to independent candidates
and one to a new party set up by the former Karabakh defence minister
Samvel Babayan.
"I would like this election to be evaluated by our people and the many
observers as the best election in the country’s history," Sarkisian
said after the poll.
Sarkisian, long-running defence minister of Armenia, has emerged
for the first time in this campaign as a public politician, with
presidential ambitions.
"If the Republican Party of Armenia takes the appropriate decision I
will take part in the presidential elections in 2008," he announced
on May 16.
Sarkisian’s position was boosted by the fact that the RPA strongly
out-performed the other pro-government parties in the contest.
As soon as the initial results were announced, Armenia’s current
president – and long-time friend and colleague of Sarkisian –
Robert Kocharian hailed the election result and paid a visit to RPA
headquarters.
The day before polling began, Kocharian told Armenian television that
he wanted to see the RPA and Prosperous Armenia secure significant
representation in parliament and predicted that neither party would
win the absolute majority required to form a government.
Things did not turn out quite like this. "If you consider that the
overwhelming majority of the leaders of local organs of power are
members of the RPA it was obvious that the authorities locally would
work exclusively for the RPA and not for the two [pro-government]
parties, as was supposed earlier," said Harutiun Khachatrian, a
commentator with Noyan Tapan news agency.
Some observers say Kocharian is annoyed that the RPA received twice as
many votes as Prosperous Armenia, with which he was closely associated
and that the parliament is now dominated by one party.
One of the RPA’s leaders, Samvel Nikoyan, said that the party might
try to govern on its own or might join forces with Prosperous Armenia
and Dashnaktsutiun.
Sarkisian was also buoyed by a generally positive verdict from
international observers of the poll – a better verdict than the one
they gave in the last elections in 2003.
Leo Platvoet, head of the observer delegation from the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe, told reporters, "Òhe campaign and
election had had both positive and negative characteristics. It’s
not black, and it’s not white. But it’s more white than black."
US State Department spokesman Tom Casey was also careful in his choice
of words.
"The election infrastructure has been greatly improved and…this is a
step in the right direction towards meeting international standards,"
he said.
"All and all, I think this is an improvement over past elections;
though certainly if you look at what the observers said, it did not
fully meet international standards."
He added that claims of fraud should be investigated.
The international comments enraged opposition parties, which had
spent much of the campaign complaining about intimidation, violent
incidents and lack of access to the media.
Analysts said the authorities ran a clever campaign that outsmarted
their opponents with their tactic of sponsoring two pro-government
parties and carefully controlling most television coverage.
Three of the nine members of the central electoral commission
representing opposition parties refused to sign the official
protocol confirming the results. The Orinats Yerkir representative
Sona Sarkisian said her party intended to appeal the results in the
constitutional court.
"The election was rigged abominably," Nikol Pashinian of the opposition
bloc Impeachment told a rally the day after the poll. "An outrageous
crime has been committed. Basically this is a coup d’etat designed
by Robert Kocharian, Serzh Sarkisian and their puppets."
Pro-opposition newspapers published allegations of bribe-giving by
some parties during the election campaign. They presented evidence
that the head of Prosperous Armenia, former arm-wrestling champion
Gagik Tsarukian, who is one of the country’s wealthiest men, handed
out seed grain and potatoes in villages as well as farming tools and
even machinery for free.
"That was not an election campaign, but a bribe distribution campaign,"
said Ashot Melikian of the Yerevan Press Club.
Members of pro-government parties say they were engaged in charity
work, not election campaigning – a position endorsed by President
Kocharian, who said, "Bribes should not be confused with charity."
The prosecutor’s office said that most claims of violations had been
proved unfounded.
Radical opposition groups held a protest rally on Freedom Square in
Yerevan, but far fewer people turned up than at a rally during the
election campaign itself. A march on the electoral commission offices
also attracted relatively small numbers.
Many commentators have given a harsh verdict on the opposition’s
elections tactics.
"I think the opposition should learn the lesson from its defeat in
the election," chairman of the Helsinki Committee of Armenia Avetik
Ishkhanian told IWPR. He said that had the opposition managed to unite
before the elections, it would have been in a much stronger position
to withstand the pressure exerted by the pro-government parties.
"The authorities have outwitted the opposition on all levels with
their financial, administrative, political and human resources,"
said political observer David Petrosian. "It would be logical in this
situation if the opposition united. But a series of leaders of the
opposition and the political parties they lead considered they were
self-sufficient and decided to take part in the elections separately.
"The calls of those leaders who insisted on an alliance and in
particular, the leader of Heritage Raffi Hovannisian were not heeded."
Rita Karapetian is a correspondent with the Noyan Topan news agency
in Yerevan.
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