VOICES FROM AFAR: FREETOCRACY
by Thomas de Waal
The National Interest Online
March 28 2008
DC
Post-Soviet elections have become elaborately choreographed
occasions. The script is now getting so precise that we even know
what the preferred winning share of the vote is for an official
candidate in the South Caucasus: 53 percent. Twice already this year,
53 percent has been the decisive number in the presidential elections
in the post-Soviet countries of not only the South Caucasus, but also
Georgia and Armenia.
This all stems from the authorities working to organize a desired
result by using what the Russians call "the administrative resource":
pressure on the media and proteges across the country to deliver the
right result on election day. In perfect harmony, the opposition
plans just as much for the protests the day after elections as
they do for the vote itself. In the latest Azerbaijani elections,
opposition activists headed straight for pre-prepared rallies from
the polling stations.
Being the leader of a post-Soviet country on the edge of Europe is a
delicate balancing act. The proximity of Europe means you are pulled
toward making democratic reforms that win you greater favor in the
West, larger aid programs, and potential membership in institutions
such as the World Trade Organization or NATO.
Yet you also sit at the top of a pyramid of patronage and need to
fight hard not to be dislodged from it. Being in opposition in these
countries is a miserable lot: ceding power to your opponents means
risking being stripped of everything and perhaps going to jail or into
exile. Consider that since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 in the
eight countries of the post-Soviet South Caucasus and Central Asia,
six leaders have been forced out of office mid-term but an official
candidate has never lost a contested election to the opposition.
Elections are especially dangerous times, with the peaceful revolutions
in Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004 and Kyrgyzstan in 2005 all
springing from disputed votes. In each case the opposition was able
to demonstrate that the incumbent had rigged the vote, orchestrate
a popular uprising and force the president from office.
In January, Mikheil Saakashvili was declared to have been reelected
as president of Georgia with 53.4 percent of the vote. In February
Serzh Sarkisian, the Armenian prime minister and official candidate,
was declared the winner of that country’s presidential election with
52.8 percent of the vote.
In both cases that number sent a double message: to the nation that the
official candidate had soundly beaten his opponents and to the world
that the margin of victory had been modest and the vote had been fair.
These elections were in fact not massively rigged. It is possible
that both Saakashvili and Sarkisian might have been elected in an
entirely free and fair vote. The trouble is that we will never know if
that would have happened. What did take place was fairly widespread
vote-rigging and heavily skewed media coverage sharply in favor of
the official candidate. This in turn naturally provoked anger from
the Georgian and Armenian oppositions, who complained that their
elections have been stolen.
In Georgia this triggered two months of protests, a hunger strike and
domestic political turmoil. The opposition’s passions have been muted
by two considerations: the widespread public perception that their
candidate, a colorless member of parliament named Levan Gagechiladze,
would have lost a runoff contest against the charismatic Saakashvili
anyway; and the fact that they still have a good chance of reducing
Saakashvili’s authority by doing well in parliamentary elections
scheduled for May.
The Armenian case has been far more tragic. The vote-rigging there
was more open, the divergence from democracy more blatant. The
opposition candidate was also much more formidable, being Armenia’s
first post-independence president, Levon Ter-Petrosian. Once the
official results were announced, Ter-Petrosian’s furious supporters
poured out onto the streets and set up camp in the center of the city,
demanding a recount of the vote.
On March 1, outgoing president Robert Kocharian sent in the security
forces to break up the tent camp and the protestors resisted. Street
fighting broke out, with official forces using firearms and the
opposition employing improvised weapons and barricades. At least
eight people were killed and more than one hundred opposition
activists are still in jail. Ter-Petrosian was put under de facto
house arrest. Armenia is now a land divided and the government has
a huge legitimacy deficit.
All this is bad enough for these small countries still seeking to
emerge into the European mainstream.
What makes it even worse is the role the third member of this electoral
dance-the international community in the shape of election observing
teams-played in letting these crises occur. Through a combination of
cynicism and incompetence, Western governments put an imprimatur of
approval on both these elections that stoked the internal conflicts.
International election monitoring missions, generally led by the
fifty-six-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE), have become an integral part of all votes in the
former-Communist world since 1991.
The missions generally fall into two parts. The professional side
of things is handled by the Warsaw-based arm of the OSCE, the
unfortunately titled Office for Democratic Institutions and Human
Rights (because its ODIHR acronym sounds like the English "oh dear")
which sets up a long-term monitoring mission, looking at media coverage
and the campaign as a whole.
Short-term observers-frequently European members of parliament
with little or no knowledge of the local scene-then fly in for
a few days, travel round polling stations, give their impressions
and then fly out. In both elections, the short-term monitors, led by
parliamentarians, drafted the initially mild statements that basically
approved the 53-percent winning margin.
In Georgia in January the monitors said the election was "in essence
consistent with most OSCE and Council of Europe commitments and
standards for democratic elections," while going on to talk of
"significant challenges" which "need to be addressed urgently." The
negative nuances of the message were lost in translation, due to
Georgian television coverage and an inaccurate interpreter who
reportedly turned out to be a relative of a leading government
official.
The Armenian statement a month later was virtually a carbon copy,
with the monitors saying, "Yesterday’s presidential election in
Armenia was conducted mostly in line with the country’s international
commitments, although further improvements are necessary to address
remaining challenges."
Why such haste and such soft statements, when there was widespread
evidence of falsification? Partly, it seems the authorities have
become more sophisticated in their tactics, putting on a much better
show at the polling stations where observers are present and saving
their manipulations for later counts. Partly, many of the short-term
observers are out of their depth or have a misplaced desire to support
"stability" in the countries they are visiting.
The world basically took its cue from the early reports. Some of
theWestern monitors in Georgia publicly embraced president-elect
Saakashvili. In Armenia, within hours of election, Serzh Sarkisian
was congratulated not only by that master of political manipulation
Vladimir Putin (who was, incidentally, elected as president of Russia
in 2000 with 52.9 percent of the vote), but also by French president
Nicolas Sarkozy, who congratulated him on his "overwhelming success."
(To be fair, Washington and much of the EU have not yet congratulated
Sarkisian and are now find themselves in an awkward position).
Weeks later, the more professional ODIHR released final observation
reports that were much more negative. In Georgia, it noted that, "The
campaign was overshadowed by widespread allegations of intimidation
and pressure, among others on public-sector employees and opposition
activists, some of which were verified by the OSCE/ODIHR Election
Observation Mission." It reported that there had been numerous
complaints which the Georgian authorities had failed to investigate.
In Armenia the final verdict was even more damning, noting that at
some polling stations there was an "implausibly high voter turnout;
results for Mr. Sarkisian in excess of 99 per cent of the vote;
and a very high incidence of invalid ballots . . .
especially in Yerevan." In one district the observers recorded that
there had been a turnout of 100.36 per cent, with almost all those
votes going to the official candidate.
One election observer I spoke to put it more pithily, saying of the
Armenian vote, "This is the kind of election I expected to see in
some African countries, not in Europe."
By the time of the final reports however, it was all too late: the
world had moved on, both presidents-elect had claimed their victory
and in Armenia the blood had flowed on the streets.
The point here is not to say that the Georgian and Armenian
oppositions are pure democrats who deserve unqualified support. An
ironic footnote is that the copyright to the "53 percent solution"
belongs to none other than Armenian challenger and former- president
Levon Ter-Petrosian, who by common consent stole an election in 1996,
when he claimed victory in the first round with no less than 51.8
percent of the vote.
The immediate issue is that these Western-led election observation
missions are now as much a part of the problem as the solution. An
election report should not be an indulgent school report encouraging a
laggard pupil. It should be a sober judgment on whether the election
reflected the democratic will of the people. That means that if the
officially declared margin of victory is small, the professionals need
to take more time to deliver a verdict. In the recent elections,
Georgia and Armenia did not need another "colored revolution,"
merely a recount of disputed votes with the prospect of a second
round of voting.
The broader point is that by these interventions, Western actors are
losing leverage in these countries and the trust of large sections of
the population. Some people in the Caucasus increasingly regard Western
governments as agents of geopolitical scheming, rather than as bringers
of democracy. The danger is that if people lose faith in elections in
Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, they will channel their disaffection
into other less peaceful forms of protest. In the long run that will
further weaken these already unstable countries on the edge of Europe.
Thomas de Waal is Caucasus editor at the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting.