ELECTIONS 2012: FAILURE OF ARMENIAN OPPOSITION
Hayk Khalatyan
PanARMENIAN.Net
May 16, 2012
According to some Armenian experts, the May 6 elections became the
“swan song” for ANC and Levon Ter-Petrossian.
The recent parliamentary elections in Armenia recorded sweeping victory
by the current authorities, the ruling Republican Party of Armenia
(RPA) and its coalition partner and rival Prosperous Armenia.
These two, along with the third member of the current coalition
Orinats Yerkir (which was the only ruling party seeing worse results
against 2007 vote), grabbed 112 out of 131 mandates of Armenia’s
National Assembly.
PanARMENIAN.Net – However, the May 6 vote should be viewed not as a
triumph of the authorities, but rather the defeat of the opposition,
in particular, its radical wing represented by the Armenian National
Congress (ANC). The elections demonstrated the full range of paradoxes
and absurdity of Armenia’s political life: despite deteriorating
social-economic situation in the country, the current authorities
get increasingly large number of votes.
This hit the society particularly hard, given the intensification of
opposition mood among people, recognized even by the authorities ahead
of election campaign; still, the opposition failed to make use of this.
6 out of 9 political parties running for the elections were
opposition. Apart from obvious outsiders of the race, the
Communist party of Armenia, the Democratic Party of Armenia and
the United Armenians party, the remaining three, ANC, Heritage and
ARF Dashnaktsutyun representing different sectors of the opposition
domain hoped they would manage to avail of the favorable conditions
and take the power hegemony away from RPA.
Of these, only Heritage was more or less successful to secure
approximately the same number of votes as in 2007 – 5.79%. Also, it
is worth noting that during the 2007 parliamentary elections Heritage
gained this result independently, while now it ran for the parliament
jointly with another opposition force, Free Democrats. Also, Heritage
involved some public sector figures in its electoral list in 2012.
Therefore, the Free Democrats had a significant contribution to
Heritage’s outcome in terms of their organizational potential.
Meanwhile, Heritage’s chief achievement is that the party’s result
was approaching that of the ANC’s (7.1%), which demonstrates that
voters supporting the opposition are starting to perceive Heritage
and its leader Raffi Hovannisian as an alternative to ANC’s Levon
Ter-Petrossian and his team.
As to Dashnaktsutyun’s failure at the elections, this was caused by
several reasons. In 2007, the party gained 13.1% of votes (only 2% less
than Prosperous Armenia who came second in the race), while in 2012
elections it came only 5th with 5.73% of votes. Twice as less cutback
on the votes may be argued by some loss of administrative resources
(Dashnaktsutyun was part of the ruling coalition in 2007), as well
as the reduced public interest to national issues, the traditional
hobby-horse of the party. Instead, the social factor appeared in the
spotlight, reflected in large-scale populist pledges of the candidates,
as well as total, and unfortunately, quite efficient use of electoral
bribery.
However, ANC which has claimed to be the major, no-alternative
counterbalance and rival of the current authorities over the past
years was most struck by the elections.
Since its establishment in 2008, ANC’s popularity has faced ups and
downs; starting March 2011, when the opposition bloc began a political
dialogue with the authorities, it saw consistent decline.
As a result, ANC faced the May elections with lowest rating ever,
and the voting outcome came to prove it.
ANC leader, former president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrossian officially
gained 351,222 votes (21,5%) at presidential elections in 2008, while
the ANC list he headed got only 69 140 votes (17,57%) at Yerevan
Municipal Council elections. This is the situation in Yerevan, the
capital city which has always been more pro-opposition than provinces,
and which the opposition rested their hopes upon.
Logically, these results were manifested in May 6 parliamentary
elections, when ANC, again with Ter-Petrossian on top, got 106 910
votes (7,1%).
While ANC blamed the government for “electoral fraud” during the
previous voting, it now had no doubts over the results of May
elections, at least with regard to the ballot count.
Decline in ANC’s popularity was conditioned by wavering of its leaders,
particularly Ter-Petrossian who lacked determination in their fight
against the current authorities. Playing games with representatives
of the ruling wings, RPA and the political dialogue process, on the
one hand and Prosperous Armenia and inter-party anti-forgery election
headquarters, on the other hand also contributed to this.
According to some Armenian experts, the May 6 elections became the
“swan song” for ANC and Levon Ter-Petrossian. In addition to some
external issues, ANC faces internal problems as well. Some prominent
figures of the Armenian National Movement, the core driving force of
ANC, quit the opposition bloc, marking the first signs of unrest within
the once united bloc. These figures disagreed on ANC’s new course and
established the above-mentioned liberal-oriented Free Democrats party.
The electoral list of ANC further outlined the existing problems, with
some political member-parties quitting the bloc. Then rumors spread
(later to be confirmed) that one of its most known members, leader
of Republic party Aram Sargsyan will withdraw from ANC immediately
after the elections. Following Sargsyan’s dismissal statement, some
others political member-forces of ANC were said to be considering
their withdrawal as well.
So, one can state that ANC exhausted itself and lost the role of
the country’s key opposition force following the May 6 vote and
post-election developments. However, the hardest blow for ANC is
that the public no longer perceives it as the sole alternative to the
current authorities, which is fatal for ANC, taking into account the
past of its leader and his team. The thing is that many supporters of
ANC voted not to favor Levon Ter-Petrossian and the Armenian National
Movement but to oppose the authorities and their policy.
Meanwhile, the public hopes that a new opposition force will emerge
shortly in Armenia, to become a real political rival to the authorities
and help the country out of the three-president triangle it appeared
in. Anyway, competition in any sphere is known to boost development
and progress.