Politkom.ru , Russia
Jan 10 2013
Presidential Election in Armenia: Interest Without Intrigue
by Sergey Markedonov
2013 will be an important political milestone for all states in the
South Caucasus. Presidential elections are in store for Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia. In Georgia, in addition to electing the head
of state, the process of replacing the ruling elite, which started
with the 1 October 2012 parliamentary elections, is to be completed.
This process will take place in parallel with constitutional reform
(amendments will take effect after a president is elected) aimed at
redistributing powers between the head of state, the government, and
the national parliament.
Armenia is the first to enter the election race. The process of
nominating candidates started as early as 25 December 2012. Initially,
15 people notified the republic’s Central Electoral Commission of
their participation, but far from all of them got through the
Electoral Commission’s screen. The only candidates remaining after the
preliminary “screening” were: incumbent President Serzh Sargsyan;
Heritage Party leader Raffi Hovhannisyan; Freedom Party leader Hrant
Bagratyan (this structure used to be part of the Armenian National
Congress [ANC]); Paruyr Hayrikyan, a dissident well known during the
Soviet era; Arman Melikyan, former foreign minister of the
unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic; political analyst Andreas
Gukasyan; and Vardan Sedrakyan, who has no party affiliation. Even a
cursory glance at this list is enough to prompt at least some
questions.
The main troublemakers of Armenian politics are missing from the list
of contenders. Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Armenia’s first president, leader
of the ANC, and participant in the 2008 presidential campaign, is not
on the list. Nor is second President Robert Kocharyan, whose ambitions
were discussed by many after the scandalous elections in 2008, which
were marred by civil confrontation. However, by the middle of last
year, the relevance of discussions about a “second attempt at a
return” (the first unsuccessful attempt was made by Levon
Ter-Petrosyan) had decreased significantly. Also absent from the list
is Gagik Tsarukyan, who could be called the main troublemaker of the
past year (again, in contrast to the first president of Armenia, who
lays claim to the title of chief troublemaker of the past five years).
Let us recall that during last year’s parliamentary election, the main
intrigue was not so much the standoff between the ruling and
opposition segments of Armenia’s political spectrum, but the
confrontation between the major “parties of power,” the Republican
Party and Prosperous Armenia. Not only did Tsarukyan’s party
consistently campaign on a populist platform, even resorting to
criticism of the authorities, but according to the election results
Prosperous Armenia showed a quantitative increase compared to the
previous convocation of parliament. In 2012, Prosperous Armenia had 11
seats more than it did five years before. It is no coincidence,
therefore, that on 24 May 2012, Prosperous Armenia declared its
nonparticipation in the postelection coalition government. However, in
December of last year, “the Tsarukyan problem” was solved. Prosperous
Armenia leader Gagik Tsarukyan declined to participate in the
campaign, while the party itself declared that it would not support
any of the candidates. For the Republicans and their candidate Serzh
Sargsyan, this is tantamount to passive support.
According to a fair remark by Yerevan political analyst Sergey
Minasyan, the upcoming election is effectively becoming a
“technicality.” In fact, just a cursory glance at the potential
contenders for the president’s seat is enough. In the early 1990s,
Hrant Bagratyan served in the government’s “economic bloc,” and was
prime minister in 1993-1996. He is called “the father of land reform,”
a policy considered one of the most consistent liberal agrarian
reforms in the whole post-Soviet space. Parallels are always subject
to qualification, but Bagratyan has an image as “the Armenian Yegor
Gaydar” which, in today’s circumstances, can hardly be regarded as the
best credential. The World Bank recognized the economic reforms in
Armenia as one of the most successful post-Soviet reforms. However, it
is unlikely that the Armenian voter will use this rating scale.
Raffi Hovhanisyan is the son of well-known Armenian-American historian
Richard Hovhanisyan. Born and educated in the United States, and
having forged a successful career there, in the early 1990s he rushed
to help his historic homeland. In 1991-1992, he was also Armenia’s
foreign minister, and since 2007 has twice been elected deputy to the
national parliament. However, being elected deputy is not at all the
same thing as becoming president. And the Heritage result of 5.79% in
the last parliamentary election suggests that Hovhanisyan should
hardly count on an “electoral revolution.”
Paruyr Hayrikyan became known back in Soviet times thanks to his
struggle for Armenia’s national independence. He was arrested several
times in the Brezhnev era, but was expelled from the USSR to Ethiopia
and stripped of his Soviet citizenship during the perestroika period
in 1988 (this story could have provided material for a first-rate
Frederick Forsyth-style detective story). [Passage omitted: anecdote
on Hayrikyan’s nationalism told by writer Michael Heifetz] In a 1988
election (if there had been one, and if, indeed, there had been an
independent Armenia), Hayrikyan would have had success. Today, past
merits are unlikely to be in high demand with the much more
down-to-earth voters, who have experienced many disappointments and
become convinced that ideological purity alone is not always enough
for well-being and prosperity.
For the other figures, there are also major doubts about their
political assets. And also about how widely they are known to the
public. Though Arman Melikyan has experience of participating in
presidential campaigns (2008), at the same time he clearly specializes
in foreign policy (whether it is diplomatic work in Kazakhstan,
working as ambassador-at-large under the auspices of the Armenian
Foreign Ministry, or “unrecognized diplomacy” in Nagorno-Karabakh).
Political scientist Andreas Gukasyan is running for the first time,
and is known not so much for political as for civil initiatives.
Vardan Sedrakyan is an epic poetry expert who has already managed to
make a number of populist statements, such as inviting the three
presidents of Armenia to be his advisers in the event of his electoral
success.
Does this mean that the upcoming election has no interest for
Armenia’s internal political dynamics? After all, the outcome of the
campaign can in fact be predicted with much more confidence than it
could five years ago. It seems that such a conclusion could only be
reached on the basis of purely superficial markers. First, it is worth
linking the two election campaigns into one cycle, because it is
difficult to understand the current “technical” race without last
year’s parliamentary elections. What was it that so influenced the
current situation? First, the May 2012 parliamentary election campaign
drew a sort of line under the story that started with the civil
controntation in 2008. It showed that President Serzh Sargsyan was not
a shadow of his predecessor, but an independent politician who tends
to use a more subtle approach than Kocharyan. Of course, history
doesn’t have a conditional mood, but it seems that political
coexistence between oppositionist Levon Ter-Petrosyan and President
Robert Kocharyan did not have to end with “bloody Saturday” [1 March
2008, when the disputed outcome of the presidential election led to
fatal clashes between Yerevan riot police and protesters in Yerevan].
Sargsyan provided the so-called “nonsystemic opposition” with a little
piece of power. First, the ANC was allowed to enter Yerevan’s Council
of Elders — that is, the capital’s parliament — and then also the
highest representative body at national level. Thus the main force of
the mass street protests got the opportunity to enter the “system,”
even if as an oppositionist force with extremely limited rights. But
unlike the Kremlin, the third Armenian president’s team did not start
to exaggerate the “Orange threat” and demonize its opponents (although
after the events of 2008 official Yerevan had more grounds to do so
than the Russian authorities had after the demonstrations on Bolotnaya
and Sakharova). On the one hand, the opposition was allowed to display
in all its glory its inability to formulate clear policy alternatives,
and on the other hand they shared a little piece of power, enabling
what in the West is popularly referred to as “engagement.” Second, in
the period between May and December 2012, Sargsyan was able to solve a
problem of an entirely different order. We are, of course, referring
to intraelite dialogue. Thus he managed to achieve Prosperous
Armenia’s benevolent neutrality, which in the current conditions
almost amounts to support.
Thus, in order to get this intrigue-free election, Sargsyan’s team had
to go through a lot of intrigue and complex maneuvers. But the most
interesting thing will start in February 2013. As the well-known
political analyst Richard Giragosyan very accurately observed,
Sargsyan’s second term will be like his first. Indeed, he is going to
the polls not as another leader’s successor and without Kocharyan’s
shadow behind him. In his first five years, he was able to minimize
polarization in society and save Armenia from the extremes of civil
confrontation (of course, this was not done without notorious
administrative resources and informal rules of the game). And that is
not a bad starting place for new legislature. But let us not forget
that Armenia is not a country with a nuclear “button” or a strong
regional power. In many cases, its internal dynamics are very tightly
aligned with “background factors,” be they the situation in the Middle
East or in the South Caucasus as a whole. And, of course, the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will continue to have a profound impact on
the country’s domestic and foreign policy. However, something else is
also evident. Without at least a minimal harmonization of the domestic
situation, pursuing a foreign policy course is much more difficult.
[Translated from Russian]