NEW ARMENIAN LEADER FORMS CABINET
By Emil Danielyan
Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
April 29 2008
On April 22 Armenia’s new President Serzh Sarkisian completed the
formation of his cabinet comprising representatives of four political
parties and key loyalists of his predecessor Robert Kocharian. The
appointment of the last five government ministers came after weeks of
horse-trading within the ruling coalition, which is still grappling
with a serious political crisis triggered by February’s disputed
presidential election.
Of the 17 ministers appointed by Sarkisian following his April
9 inauguration, 11 had held the same positions in the previous
government. Five of them are affiliated with the governing Republican
Party’s junior coalition partners, the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (ARF, also known as the Dashnak Party) and the Prosperous
Armenia Party. Two of the six new ministers represent another
party, Orinats Yerkir (Country of Law), the leader of which, Artur
Baghdasarian, came in third in the presidential race and recognized
its outcome after being offered government posts. Orinats Yerkir will
now control the ministries of transport and emergency situations.
The more powerful ministries of defense, foreign affairs and
finance will be run by three other new figures who have no party
affiliations. The fourth (and most influential) newcomer is Deputy
Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government Armen Gevorgian. The
34-year-old Gevorgian had served as Kocharian’s chief-of-staff and
is widely regarded as the most trusted of the former president’s
aides. Gevorgian’s new role will enable Kocharian to retain influence
on government policies. The extent of that influence will depend on
who will manage the Armenian police, the National Security Service
(NSS), and the tax and customs services, most of which are expected
to have new heads in the coming weeks.
The scale and intensity of post-election demonstrations staged by
Sarkisian’s main election challenger, Levon Ter-Petrosian, showed
just how dissatisfied many Armenians are with their government,
despite six consecutive years of double-digit economic growth. A
visible increase in living standards has been accompanied by growing
government corruption and a widening income gap between the country’s
wealthiest citizens connected to the government and the vast majority
of the population. The resulting widespread sense of injustice is a
key reason why the once unpopular Ter-Petrosian made an unexpectedly
strong showing in the February 19 election, which he considers to
have been rigged. It took lethal force and military intervention
to stop tens of thousands of angry protesters from sweeping the
Kocharian-Sarkisian camp from power.
With the political crisis continuing, Sarkisian is clearly worried
about this popular sentiment as he begins his five-year term in
office. In his public statements that followed the deadly post-election
unrest in Yerevan, Sarkisian renewed his earlier pledges to instigate
"second-generation reforms" that would strengthen the rule of law
and lead to a more even distribution of the benefits of economic
growth. His newly appointed prime minister, Tigran Sarkisian (no
relation), has echoed those pledges, announcing his intention to
implement "ambitious" policies. The 48-year-old economist is known
as a free-market reformer who earned plaudits from the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank in his previous capacity as chairman
of the Central Bank of Armenia. Local observers doubt, however, that
he will have the political muscle to take on economic clans that have
long enjoyed preferential treatment by the government and that form
the backbone of President Sarkisian’s power base.
The composition of the new Armenian government hardly bodes well for
far-reaching policy changes. Addressing university students in Yerevan
on March 12, Sarkisian implied that it would be radically different
from the previous cabinet. "There will be changes that many people
do not expect," he said (Aravot, March 13). But the changes were few
and not quite unexpected. Victor Dallakian, a veteran parliamentarian
close to some regime insiders, suggested on April 22 that Sarkisian
had been forced to keep dodgy Kocharian loyalists like Gevorgian in
the government, because of the former president’s decisive role in
the violent suppression of the opposition protests. Dallakian claimed
that the new president would try to get rid of them if he managed to
solidify his grip on power (RFE/RL Armenia Report, April 22).
"We have no right to say, ‘Dear people, tighten your belts, wait until
we implement second-generation reforms in three, four or five years,
and you will be better off,’" Sarkisian told the leadership of the
State Tax Service (STS) on April 23 (Armenian Public Television,
April 23). He demanded that tax officials stop harassing small and
medium-sized businesses to meet their rising revenue targets. Sarkisian
made even stronger statements at a similar televised meeting with
senior officials from the State Customs Committee (SCC) on April 18,
saying that corruption within the government agency was "thriving"
and hampering Armenia’s economic development.
The sincerity of these remarks is questionable, given the fact
that Armen Avetisian, the reputedly corrupt head of the SCC who
was sacked earlier in April, is a longtime close associate of
Sarkisian. Sarkisian himself has been accused by government critics of
amassing a huge fortune and helping a handful of government-connected
tycoons monopolize lucrative sectors of the Armenian economy over the
past decade. For their part, the so-called "oligarchs" have helped
the ruling regime win elections by less than legal means. Keeping
them and other government-connected wealthy individuals happy while
addressing the long-simmering public discontent in earnest seems a
mission impossible.