Bloomberg
Feb 19 2008
Armenia Elects President as Rival Warns of Protests (Update1)
By Mark Bentley
Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) — Armenians vote today in a presidential
election, with the opposition already raising concerns that the vote
may be rigged.
Former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan says his supporters will protest
on the streets of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, if election monitors
rule that the front-runner, Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan, won
unfairly. Ter-Petrosyan, 63, is making a return to politics in the
former Soviet republic after being ousted from power a decade ago.
“It’s a dangerous situation and unrest cannot be ruled out,” said
Larisa Minasyan, director of the Armenia branch of the Open Society
Institute, a New York-based pro-democracy body founded by billionaire
investor George Soros. “I would only hope that the political
leadership and law enforcers act responsibly.”
Sargsyan says Armenians should vote for him because of his party’s
economic achievements, which have brought growth of more than 13
percent for each of the last three years and raised living standards.
Ter-Petrosyan says the expansion has benefited the richest Armenians
most and accuses Sargsyan of failing to seek a resolution to disputes
with neighbors Azerbaijan and Turkey that curb exports from the
land-locked country.
Armenia, which lies in the southern Caucasus and became independent
from the former Soviet Union in 1991, is under pressure from the U.S.
and the European Union to strengthen its democracy at a time when it
is receiving hundred of millions of dollars in aid.
Flawed Elections
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other
international observers have described each of the six elections
since 1995, except last year’s parliamentary vote, as flawed.
Sargsyan, 53, is the nominee of President Robert Kocharyan, who’s
served the maximum two five-year terms.
The OSCE has almost 400 observers in Armenia, also bordered by
Georgia and Iran, to monitor balloting by the country’s 2.3 million
voters. That’s as many as at the parliamentary election last year.
Ballot boxes will close at 8 p.m. and initial results will be
published by the election board early tomorrow.
An EU strategy paper issued last year said the 27-nation bloc
“should make democratic progress, respect of human rights and
enforcement of the rule of law a priority for future cooperation”
with Armenia.
Sargsyan has 51 percent support, according to a poll commissioned by
state-controlled Armenia Public TV and Radio, which interviewed 1,500
voters Jan. 20-29. The margin of error was 2.6 percentage points.
Assessment
Ter-Petrosyan, who, at 12 percent, was tied for second with former
parliamentary speaker Artur Baghdasaryan, 39, dismissed the survey as
“flawed.”
The leading candidate must get more than 50 percent to avoid a runoff
against the nearest challenger in two weeks.
The OSCE will give its assessment of the election tomorrow.
Ter-Petrosyan’s supporters, a coalition of more than 20 parties and
civil groups, plan a rally in the capital the same day.
“If there is fraud, then we will use our legal right to protest,”
Ter-Petrosyan told reporters at a news conference in Yerevan Feb. 17.
“There will be a struggle and it will be a struggle to the very
end.”
“There is no person in the world more interested than I in an
election free of vote-rigging,” Sargsyan said in an interview at his
office in Yerevan late yesterday. “In any case, if we were capable
of altering the outcome then we would be considered among the
greatest illusionists of all time.”
`Falsification’
Ter-Petrosyan, addressing more than 50,000 of his supporters in
Yerevan’s main square Feb. 16, called on Armenians to vote to
“reduce chances of falsification.” A rally organized by Sargsyan’s
Republican Party the next day attracted similar numbers.
The OSCE, in a report published Feb. 16, said it “continues to
receive reports of citizens being concerned about vote-buying schemes
and anxious regarding the collection of passport data and the secrecy
of the vote.” Armenia’s media had been “critical” of
Ter-Petrosyan, while “the other eight candidates were presented in a
positive or neutral manner.”
Armenia’s constitutional court dismissed a plea by Ter- Petrosyan on
Feb. 11 to postpone the election by two weeks. Biased media coverage
made “further participation in the campaign impossible,” he argued.
Ter-Petrosyan’s rivalry with Sargsyan dates back to 1998. He was
forced to step down as president when Sargsyan and Kocharyan, both
ministers in his government, objected to an OSCE peace plan to end
the dispute with Azerbaijan over the mountainous region of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Both Kocharyan and Sargsyan are from the enclave,
which is located within Azerbaijan’s borders.
Economic Embargo
The proclamation of self-rule by ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh
in 1991 sparked a three-year war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that
killed thousands. It also prompted an economic embargo on Armenia by
Azerbaijan and Turkey, crimping the country’s exports.
Ter-Petrosyan says the standoff with Azerbaijan is hindering growth,
which has come mainly from building and services. The two countries
remain officially at war. Sargsyan, seeking to stave off criticism
from Ter-Petrosyan that he is stalling talks on Nagarno-Karabakh,
said he will seek a swift resumption of negotiations if he becomes
president.
“I’m confident that the talks can resume in March,” he said. “I
can’t promise to our people that the issue will be resolved tomorrow,
but let me say that I am a staunch supporter of the peaceful
resolution of the conflict.”
Diaspora Money
Sargsyan also points to increased investment by the Armenian
diaspora, which is helping boost construction, as an example of
renewed confidence in Armenia’s political and economic future.
Yerevan’s center, once blighted by power blackouts, is now in a
building boom, while economic output per capita has more than
quadrupled in the past eight years to $3,000. The currency, the dram,
has gained 37 percent against the dollar.
Still, Sargsyan’s failure to agree on a Nagorno-Karabakh settlement
with Azerbaijan is deterring investment by U.S. and European
companies, said Gerard Libaridian, professor of modern Armenian
history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“The resolution of the Karabakh dispute should be the priority for
the next president, then everything else will follow,” Libaridian
said. “A solution will open up our borders and create a larger and
more democratic environment for investors.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Bentley in Yerevan,
Armenia at [email protected] .