ARMENIA: OPPOSITION CANDIDATES CONSIDER JOINING FORCES
Marianna Grigoryan

EurasiaNet
Feb 05 2008
NY

Two weeks before Armenia’s presidential vote, two key opposition
candidates and a prominent opposition party leader are in talks about a
possible merger. If a unified candidate emerges from those discussions,
Armenia’s February 19 election could prove uncharacteristically
competitive.

On February 1, former president Levon Ter-Petrosian told voters in
Vanadzor, Armenia’s third largest city, that an opposition merger may
be in the offing. Specifically, he hinted that fellow presidential
candidate Artur Baghdasarian, a former parliamentary speaker, and
Heritage Party leader Raffi Hovannisian, would join forces with his
presidential campaign. "If we say that there are serious grounds for
saying that they will unite, then they are indeed quite serious,"
Ter-Petrosian campaign spokesperson Arman Musinian told EurasiaNet.

"Negotiations are underway and details of the format of unification
will be clear in the coming days."

The Heritage Party was one of only two opposition parties to gain seats
in parliament during the 2007 legislative elections. [For background
see the EurasiaNet special feature Armenia: Vote 2007].

The only Diaspora figure among Armenia’s political celebrities,
Hovannisian enjoys a Teddy Roosevelt-style image among many voters —
a political straight-shooter who is impervious to corruption. His
endorsement is widely expected to give a presidential candidate a
significant boost.

In late 2007, Hovannisian, a former foreign minister under
Ter-Petrosian, said that he would decide which candidate to support
based on their responses to a questionnaire. With the election two
weeks away, Heritage has still not officially made its choice.

"Currently, we are at a stormy negotiating stage and it will be clear
during this week what decision we make," Heritage Party member and
spokesman Hovsep Khurshudian told EurasiaNet. "We hope to appear in
the Levon Ter-Petrosian, Artur Baghdasarian, Raffi Hovannisian format,
whose likelihood will become clear soon."

Baghdasarian heads the Orinats Yerkir (Rule of Law) Party, and is
generally viewed as the third leading contender in the presidential
race, behind the government-backed candidate, Prime Minister Serzh
Sarkisian, and Ter-Petrosian. At a February 3 rally in Yerevan’s
Liberty Square, he expressed confidence that opposition unification
would take place.

"There is much talk today as to who will join whom. Today it is not
important who will join whom, but consolidation is very important.

Today we are in active political talks," Baghdasarian told an audience
of roughly 20,000 to 25,000 supporters. "Today it will be an honor
for any politician to join us, to join these tens of thousands of
people and change this unlawful system."

With only days remaining before the election, political analysts
believe that such a joining of forces would give the opposition a
lift in efforts to defeat the odds-on presidential favorite, Sarkisian
and the governing Republican Party of Armenia’s well-oiled political
machine that backs him. With a variety of candidates potentially
splitting the opposition vote, Sarkisian has long been expected to
register an easy victory. Opposition unity, however, could seriously
upset the Sarkisian side’s election calculus. At the very least,
a coalition candidate would likely make this presidential vote the
tightest in Armenia’s post-Soviet history.

Previous presidential and parliamentary votes in Armenia have been
marred by allegations of fraud. Officials in out-going President
Robert Kocharian’s administration have vowed that the February 19
will conform to international standards. However, opposition leaders
have already accused incumbent authorities of improperly using
"administrative resources" to retain power. [For background see the
Eurasia Insight archive].

Many analysts and politicians believe that Ter-Petrosian will emerge
as the unification candidate. The former president’s plans for a
Yerevan rally on February 9 have helped spur such a belief.

Candidates have until February 9 to withdraw from the race.

"About 18 political parties have now joined Levon Ter-Petrosian
and I do not exclude that in the next 10 days this number will
increase," said independent political analyst David Petrosian. "If
Artur Baghdasarian and Raffi Hovannisian join, it will be a purely
political bloc, which will be received well by the people and will
bring advantages to the unified candidate."

On the other side of the political fence, Republican Party of Armenia
MP Armen Ashotian downplays the potential impact of an opposition
united front. "If such a thing nevertheless happens and, say, Artur
Baghdasarian will join Levon Ter-Petrosian, it will be like the
return of the prodigal son," Ashotian commented. Baghdasarian was
first elected to parliament in 1995 as a member of Ter-Petrosian’s
Armenian National Movement. "And if Ter-Petrosian joins Baghdasarian,
it will be clear for all that his seeming great authority does not
correspond with reality."

Baghdasarian, meanwhile, has alleged that he has received a death
threat, telling supporters at the February 3 Yerevan rally that "the
incumbent authorities" will be to blame "[i]f something happens to
me." Law enforcement officials are investigating the reported threat.

The claim is seen by some – including Prime Minister Sarkisian —
as political stagecraft. If a Ter-Petrosian-Baghdasarian pact goes
through, Ashotian added, the two candidates’ potential votes may
"go to the RPA or, say, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation."

Parliamentary Speaker Vahan Hovhannisian is the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation’s candidate for president.

"Even if, in the best case, three of the candidates get some more votes
through uniting, it will not be enough even to take the election to a
runoff," claimed Ashotian. "There is such a thing as plain sociology
that can give an answer to your questions."

"Plain sociology," for the RPA, is represented by polls performed by
the Sociometer research center, an organization derided by opposition
candidates for allegedly manipulating data. [For background see the
Eurasia Insight archive]. According to recent polling data published
by Sociometer, Ter-Petrosian has the highest negative rating of any
candidate, hovering around 40 percent, according to the pollster’s
director, Aharon Adibekian. The survey of public attitudes toward
the presidential candidates was given to 2,240 people and had a 1
percent margin of error.

Based on the results of the previous and current opinion polls,
Adibekian put Ter-Petrosian’s support rating in the neighborhood of
1 to 3 percent. Critics term that rating "ridiculous."

Despite such an allegedly low rating, critics point out, Ter-Petrosian
remains the target of a steady stream of negative coverage by
television outlets, an imbalance mentioned in the latest report from
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe/Office for
Democratic Institutions’ election observation mission. A regional
campaign office for the former president was also recently set on fire.

Apart from unequal television coverage, the OSCE/ODIHR report mentioned
that supporters of Baghdasarian and Ter-Petrosian encountered problems
in different regions to rent campaign office space.