Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
May 11 2007
Armenia: Claims of Official Harassment Mar Ballot
Opposition activists see arrest of anti-government campaigner as
culmination of campaign to cow them before the election.
By Karine Asatryan in Yerevan (CRS No. 391 10-May-07)
Armenia’s opposition parties accuse the government of using the
dirtiest of tricks, from the vicious to the ridiculous, to stop them
winning seats in parliament in elections on May 12.
After an opposition campaign allegedly marred by official harassment,
activists were shocked by the arrest of anti-government campaigner
Alexander Arzumanian on May 7.
Security service agents said they found 55,400 US dollars at the
former foreign minister’s Yerevan flat and accused him of involvement
in a Russian plot to launder money. Fellow ex-minister Vahan
Shirkhanian was also targeted, and is said to have had 28,000 dollars
seized.
According to the National Security Service, Shirkhanian and
Arzumanian went to Moscow in April to meet Levon Markos, a Russian
citizen wanted by police in Armenia for fraud and money laundering.
Shirkhanian said the suggestion that the money found at his home was
illegal was absurd.
`My friends had helped with some money for the wedding of my
daughter. This sum was held for my daughter, who recently got
engaged, her fiancé, my cousin and my neighbour,’ said Shirkhanian,
who has not been charged.
Opposition activists saw the raids as the culmination of a campaign
to cow them before the election, which is a key test of Armenia’s
willingness to live up to its democratic rhetoric.
`Such actions against a single person are a reflection of what the
government is doing to the whole Armenian republic,’ said Raffi
Hovannisian, head of the opposition Heritage Party and a former
foreign minister.
Few activists have suffered the fate of the two ex-ministers, but
meetings at town halls have found themselves subject to sudden `power
cuts’, voters have been warned off, activists have been intimidated
and their leaflets have been confiscated.
It all adds up to an atmosphere both fearful and apathetic, where
voters are too scared to vote for change and many people scarcely
believe change is even possible.
In parliamentary elections four years ago, parties loyal to President
Robert Kocharian won a majority in parliament despite widespread
allegations of fraud from the opposition, which won just 15 of the
131 seats in the national assembly.
Earlier elections in 2003 returned Kocharian to the presidency, and
were greeted by thousands-strong protests against electoral fraud.
Amalia Kostanian, head of the Yerevan office of anti-corruption NGO
Transparency International, said the government was using its clout
even more forcefully than in 2003.
`This administrative resource is being used much more cynically, they
are giving out more pre-election bribes, and the law is being
interpreted in more interesting ways,’ said Kostanian.
Specifically, the law did not criminalise a party handing out bribes
until April 8 since that was the official start date of campaigning.
Other cases of alleged intimidation have been considerably less
subtle.
A 19-year-old volunteer from Hovannisian’s Heritage Party called Nune
Ashughian was stopped when handing out leaflets in Yerevan on April
20. Four men got out of a green BMW and the driver, a stout man aged
about 40, demanded the leaflets.
`I refused to give up the leaflets, but he took them off me and said
it was their territory and that I shouldn’t hand out rubbish,’ she
said.
A week later, the police said the leaflets had been taken by Robert
Pogosian, a local resident who was apparently cross that they were
being dropped in hallways that his mother had to clean. He had handed
them in to the police, they said.
According to the opposition, many local officials refused to let them
put up posters or rent buildings. For Aram Sarkisian, head of the
Republic Party, the techniques of controlling the vote have become
slicker than last time round.
`While we’re still trying to get to the places where we want to hold
meetings, officials and policemen have managed to scare [the local
residents] so they don’t come,’ he said.
Several times, representatives of the Armenian People’s Party have
had to use their car batteries to power public address systems, when
electricity supplies have mysteriously been shut off.
Such power cuts happened in Martuni on April 26 and in Sisian on May
2. In Martuni, several local residents told IWPR that local officials
had warned them not to attend the speech by NPA leader Stepan
Demirchian.
Demirchian stood against Kocharian in the 2003 presidential
elections, coming second in the run-off with 32.5 per cent of the
vote. He said the tactics he was seeing reminded him of what he faced
four years ago, when international observers said the vote-counting
process was flawed and the election fell short of international
standards.
`The authorities talk about European values, justice. But they are as
amoral now as they have ever been, that’s their level,’ he said.
Arus, a resident of the village of Shnokh in the Lori region, told
this correspondent that she is scared to go to opposition meetings,
fearing for her job. Even though she didn’t go to such events, local
officials were still intimidating her, she said.
In a country where the economy is yet to recover from the post-Soviet
collapse, and a third of the population live below the poverty line,
such threats carry weight.
The 2003 poll came mere months before the peaceful revolution in
neighbouring Georgia, which was followed by a popular revolution in
Ukraine and a government collapse in Kyrgyzstan. Hovannisian hinted
that opposition parties might push for such an uprising, if they felt
the government had robbed them at the ballot box.
`This will repeat itself until the current Armenian government is
replaced by a new one – either through elections or through a popular
uprising,’ said Hovannisian.
Observers singled out an interview given by Gagik Tsarukian, head of
the pro-government Flourishing Armenia party and one of the country’s
wealthiest men, to Russian television as a sign that the president
would not loosen his grip and allow a Ukraine-style revolution
without a fight.
`Our president is keeping an eye on the situation. We have a very
strong president, so this will not happen here,’ Tsarukian told
Russia’s 02 channel.
Meanwhile, in a television interview this week, Kocharian rejected
the opposition claims of intimidation by the authorities.
`This campaign is considerably different from all other electoral
processes in that all the participants have enjoyed absolute freedom.
Nobody, no party has ever had any difficulty or obstacle in meeting
with the people.
`Airtime was available; all the political forces had the opportunity
to convey their messages to the people. Different parties used the
opportunity to this or that extent, but that’s another story – that
depended on the human potential of those parties, sometimes financial
resources or even a lack of fresh ideas.’
Karine Asatryan is a reporter at the A1+ TV Company.