ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT, OPPOSITION SET FOR ANOTHER ELECTION SHOWDOWN
Emil Danielyan
Jamestown Foundation
April 1 2009
Armenia’s leadership and main opposition forces are gearing up for
a fresh showdown in the first local elections in Yerevan since the
early 1990s to be held on May 31. The surprise decision by the top
opposition leader, Levon Ter-Petrosian, to run for Yerevan mayor
has added a new twist to the race and represents the most serious
challenge to President Serzh Sarkisian during his almost one-year rule.
Mayors of the Armenian capital have been appointed by the presidents
of the republic since the country adopted its post-Soviet constitution
in 1995. Yerevan residents have only been able to elect the chief
executives of the city’s administrative districts and their "councils
of elders." The city as a whole has had no such legislative body over
the past 14 years. An amendment to the Armenian constitution enacted
in late 2005 abolished the effective presidential control of the
municipal government, leaving it to the authorities to decide whether
the Yerevan mayor should be directly elected or reinstated by the
municipal council. The authorities chose the latter option. It was not
until December 2008 that the government-controlled National Assembly
passed a law paving the way for the elections of the council. Under
that law, all of its 65 seats will be up for grabs on the party list
basis. A party or bloc winning over 40 percent of the vote would
have a 10 percent "bonus" added to its electoral tally and see its
top candidate automatically become mayor.
The controversial provision is clearly aimed at making it easier
for Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) to re-install
the incumbent Mayor Gagik Beglarian, who will be leading its list
of candidates in the upcoming polls. A wealthy businessman with a
questionable reputation, Beglarian was named by Sarkisian to run the
Yerevan municipality on March 4. He had previously governed the city’s
central Kentron district for more than six years (,
March 5).
With Beglarian’s appointment, the HHK indicated its intention to
heavily rely on its extensive government links to win a majority in the
new council. Even if the ruling party falls short of the 40 percent
voting threshold, it should be able to enlist the support of three
other parties represented within the Armenian government. However,
the popularity of these parties is unknown. Two of them, the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (ARF, also known as the Dashnak Party)
and the Orinats Yerkir (Country of Law) party, had campaigned for
the February 2008 presidential election on opposition platforms that
secured a considerable number of votes. Their subsequent decision
to recognize Sarkisian’s victory in the disputed ballot, join his
coalition cabinet and unequivocally endorse the authorities’ deadly
post-election crackdown on the opposition is certain to have alienated
many voters. The ARF and Orinats Yerkir as well as the fourth coalition
party, Prosperous Armenia, will now have trouble distancing themselves
from the government and using opposition-style rhetoric.
The government camp appears to have been caught off guard by
Ter-Petrosian’s March 15 decision to enter the fray at the head
of the electoral list of his Armenian National Congress (HAK), an
alliance of 18 mostly small opposition groups. Explaining the move, HAK
representatives said that the Ter-Petrosian-led opposition considers
the municipal poll as a "second round" of the 2008 presidential
election and would use its control over the Yerevan municipality to
topple the Sarkisian administration. The HAK’s electoral chances were
hardly bolstered by its failure to team up with Armenia’s second most
important opposition force, the Heritage Party. The two opposition
camps disagreed over their joint candidate for the post of Yerevan
mayor. The HAK insisted on Ter-Petrosian’s candidacy, whereas Heritage
wanted one of its own leaders, notably the U.S.-born former Foreign
Minister Raffi Hovannisian, to top the list of the would-be opposition
bloc’s candidates (, March 2).
"There is a large segment of the electorate that finds it hard
to vote for Levon Ter-Petrosian," Hovsep Khurshudian, a Heritage
party spokesman, told a news conference, summing up his party’s
arguments. (RFE/RL Armenia Report, March 18.) Such statements
provoked fierce criticism from Armenian newspapers sympathetic to
Ter-Petrosian. Some of them went as far as to accuse Hovannisian of
cutting a secret deal with the authorities. This might explain why
Heritage announced in a March 23 statement that it will not participate
in the elections. As the independent daily Aravot pointed out in a
March 24 editorial, "If that party participated in the elections on its
own, it would not avoid a barrage of verbal abuse from supporters of
the Armenian National Congress for a single minute" (Aravot, March 24).
Ter-Petrosian’s aides welcomed Heritage’s decision to drop out of the
mayoral race, saying that it will facilitate the HAK’s victory in
the polls. But some local observers disagree pointing to a sizable
part of the electorate that dislikes both the authorities and
Ter-Petrosian. The latter served as Armenia’s first president from
1991-1998 and despite his recent popularity (especially with young
and middle-class urban voters) he is still blamed by many people for
severe socioeconomic hardship that characterized the early years of
the country’s independence. The Heritage boycott makes these people
more likely to stay at home on election day.
Low voter turnout would in turn benefit the authorities and the
HHK in particular, which has long capitalized on public apathy in
local elections to establish a tight grip on self-government bodies
across Armenia. This is especially true for Yerevan where opposition
candidates have traditionally performed well and where vote rigging
is much more difficult to perpetrate than in rural areas. That the
Sarkisian administration will do practically everything to ensure
a successful election seems beyond doubt. An opposition victory in
Yerevan, home to at least one third of the country’s population,
would be the beginning of its end. The only question is whether
Ter-Petrosian, who almost brought down the ruling regime with massive
street protests following the 2008 election, will be able to do it
this time around.