PREVIEW-ARMENIA’S WOULD-BE LEADER LIMBERS UP IN PARL’T VOTE
By Hasmik Lazarian

Reuters, UK
May 10 2007

YEREVAN, May 10 (Reuters) – Armenia votes in a parliamentary election
on Saturday that should set the stage for President Robert Kocharyan
to hand over the country’s leadership to his most trusted lieutenant
next year.

The Republican party — led by Serzh Sarksyan, the acting prime
minister and Kocharyan’s friend and favoured successor — is expected
to easily defeat the opposition when the 2.3 million voters in
ex-Soviet Armenia go to the polls.

But simmering tensions burst to the surface last month when gunmen
tried to kill a senior member of Sarksyan’s party and two blasts
ripped through the offices of a rival pro-presidential party,
Prosperous Armenia.

The violence has revived memories of a 1999 shootout in parliament
that killed the speaker and the prime minister.

Armenia, in the Caucasus mountains, is in a region emerging as a vital
transit route for oil exports from the Caspian Sea to energy-hungry
world markets, though has no pipelines of its own.

Armenia fought a still-unresolved war with neighbouring Azerbaijan in
the early 1990s. It also has fraught relations with neighbour Turkey,
in part because Ankara will not accept as genocide the killing of
1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.

Armenia has refused entry visas to eight Turkish nationals who were to
be part of a 400-strong election observer mission from the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

PRESIDENT’S ALTER EGO

Sarksyan, 52, has been the clear focus of his party’s election
campaign. "I ask for your vote of confidence" has been his slogan at
campaign rallies.

Kocharyan is required by the constitution to step down next year
when his second term ends. Sarksyan — widely seen as Kocharyan’s
alter ego — is strong favourite to win the presidential election
that will follow.

Their relationship goes back 20 years. Both from Nagorno-Karabakh,
the mainly Armenian region of Azerbaijan that was the focus of the
1990s war, they worked together in the separatist movement, then
restored their partnership in Yerevan.

A trim man with a shock of grey hair, Sarksyan became prime minister
when incumbent Andranik Margaryan died in March.

"Serzh Sarksyan has a real chance of becoming president," analyst
Gevorg Poghosyan said.

Voters on Saturday are expected to credit Kocharyan’s allies for
the years of strong economic growth he has overseen. The opposition
is divided and its members say they are not given fair treatment on
tightly controlled television.

Opinion polls suggest the chief challenger to the Republican party
is its pro-presidential stablemate, Prosperous Armenia, set up by
wealthy businessman Gagik Tsarukyan.

Its rivalry with Sarksyan’s party seems to have become the focus for
a turf war inside Armenia’s ruling elite.

"The main intrigue of the elections is the fight between the two
government parties," Poghosyan said. "There is a battle going on not
over ideas but … for power."

Analysts predict the strongest opposition force will be the Orinats
Yerkir (Country of Laws) party led by estranged Kocharyan ally Artur
Baghdasaryan. Smaller opposition groups may also win seats.

After past elections, opposition supporters alleging ballot-rigging
have clashed with police. Riot police on Wednesday used tear gas
against a group of opposition activists.