EX-KARABAKH LEADER ASSERTS OPPOSITION CREDENTIALS
By Astghik Bedevian and Hovannes Shoghikian in Syunik
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
April 20 2007
Samvel Babayan, the Yerevan-based former military leader of
Nagorno-Karabakh, dismissed on Friday widespread suggestions that
he was pressured by the Armenian government into bowing out of an
election showdown with a brother of Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian.
Babayan and businessman Aleksandr Sarkisian were the main candidates
in a single-member constituency in the southeastern Syunik region,
in what many regarded as the most intriguing individual contest in
Armenia’s upcoming parliamentary elections. Sarkisian is strongly
backed by the governing Republican Party (HHK), while Babayan’s Dashink
(Alliance) party claims to be in opposition to the Armenian government.
Babayan unexpectedly withdrew his candidacy from the constituency
encompassing the town of Goris and surrounding villages in late March,
saying that will contest the elections only on the party list basis.
In an interview with RFE/RL, the once powerful retired general blamed
the media for the decision. "The media wanted to personalize things
and turn an ideological struggle into a personal one," he said. "I
just did not want to allow that and decided to score a team victory
[for Dashink] instead."
Babayan also dismissed speculation that the pullout from Goris was
the price he paid for being deemed eligible to stand in the May 12
elections. Under Armenia’s constitution, only those Armenian citizens
who have permanently resided in the country for the past five years
can run for the National Assembly. Babayan moved to Yerevan from
Karabakh in 2004.
"I have not met Robert Kocharian in the past two years," argued
Babayan. "We are an opposition, but an ideological, program-based one,"
he said of Dashink, dismissing lingering suspicions about his secret
ties with Armenia’s Karabakh-born president.
Babayan, who commanded the Karabakh Armenian army from 1993-1999, has
kept a low profile since he and several of his aides were reportedly
taken to Armenia’s the National Security Service for questioning in
early March. But he sounded bullish about taking on the authorities
as he kicked off Dashink’s election campaign in the southern town of
Echmiadzin on Thursday.
"We must find the strength to remove the government," he said in
a campaign speech there. "Otherwise we will be doomed to living
in slavery."
Meanwhile, Aleksandr Sarkisian, notorious for his flamboyant behavior,
seems assured of victory in the Goris constituency. The area close
to Karabakh has long been considered a de facto fiefdom of Surik
Khachatrian, the equally controversial governor of Syunik affiliated
with the governing Republican Party of Armenia (HHK).
Government critics fear that people there will simply be bribed or
bullied into voting for the government-backed candidate.
Earlier this month, Sarkisian visited the local village of Tegh, the
birthplace of the his father, on a campaign trip. "He said, ‘People,
I don’t like making speeches. Just elect me and I’ll then tell you
how I’m going to support you,’" Laura, a resident of Tegh, told RFE/RL.
The middle-aged woman admitted that she and two other members of her
family would readily accept a vote bribe. "We have three votes and we
would sell all of them. He will do nothing for the village anyway,"
she said.
But as one man in the neighboring village of Khndzoresk observed,
"They don’t have to hand out flour or something else. They just show
force and you start shuddering."
He said villagers are too scared to even report inaccuracies in the
local voter registry to election officials. "Whatever the governor and
the village mayor say has to be executed," he claimed. "If you defy,
your end will come."
A climate of fear is even more evident in the town of Goris where,
unlike in most other parts of Armenia, many people avoid speaking
out against the government or supporting the opposition loudly. "The
governor is intimidating everyone," explained one elderly man.
In Syunik’s capital Kapan and the nearby industrial town of Kajaran,
power effectively belongs to another senior member of the HHK. Maxim
Hakobian is the chief executive of a German-owned mining giant which
is the area’s main employer. "Our decision depends on the director,"
one resident of Kajaran told RFE/RL in reference to the elections.
"We do whatever the director tells us to do."
Hakobian will, no doubt, tell them to vote for the HHK and its
candidate in the Kapan-Kajaran constituency. That might explain why
local residents showed little enthusiasm when Raffi Hovannisian, the
leader of the opposition Zharangutyun party, visited the town on a
campaign trip to Syunik this week. Two of them stopped Hovannisian’s
campaign motorcade on its way out of Kajaran to apologize for not
approaching him and shaking his hands.
"We could lose our jobs because of that," one of the men told
the popular opposition politician. "There are no other employment
opportunities here."
Things looked similar in Syunik’s most remote district bordering
Iran. "If somebody from the Republican Party holds a meeting here,
all school students, factory employees, schoolteachers, and other
workers will be forced to attend," said one woman in the town of
Agarak. "But if the opposition comes to town, you’d better stay away
from the square."