ARMENIAN PRESIDENT USES YEREVAN ELECTION TO CEMENT HOLD ON POWER
Emil Danielyan

Jamestown Foundation
June 11 2009

Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan has tightened his grip on power
after municipal elections in Yerevan were controversially won by his
Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). The country’s main opposition
groups have rejected the official results of the May 31 vote as
fraudulent. The largest of them, led by former President Levon
Ter-Petrosian, has pledged to intensify its efforts to topple the
Sarksyan administration. However, it is unlikely to make the type of
push for power that followed the disputed presidential election of
February 2008.

The polls were conducted in accordance with a 2005 constitutional
amendment, which enabled the residents of the Armenian capital to
choose their mayor through a municipal assembly elected by universal
suffrage. Yerevan mayors were previously presidentially appointed. The
65 seats in the new Council of Elders were contested on the party
list basis, with six political parties and one alliance in the
running. Under Armenian law, a party or bloc securing more than 40
percent of the vote will see the person leading its electoral list
automatically become mayor.

According to the government-controlled Central Election Commission
(CEC), the ruling HHK garnered 47.4 percent of the vote, and
thus reinstalled its main candidate -the incumbent Mayor Gagik
Beglarian. The Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), the HHK’s most
important partner within the governing coalition, finished in
distant second place with 22.7 percent, followed by Ter-Petrosian’s
Armenian National Congress (HAK) alliance (17.4 percent) (Armenian
Public Television, June 1). None of the other candidates cleared
the required 7 percent threshold for being represented in the city
council. For two of them, the Orinats Yerkir (Country of Law) party
and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, also known as the
Dashnak Party) that was a particularly bitter experience. Orinats
Yerkir holds four ministerial portfolios in the central government,
while the ARF quit the ruling coalition in late April in protest over
Sarksyan’s conciliatory policy on Turkey. Both parties are now facing
an uncertain future.

Sarksyan was quick to welcome the elections as a "really serious
step forward" in Armenia’s democratization and elimination of its
post-Soviet culture of electoral fraud (Statement by the Armenian
president, June 1). This claim was echoed by a 12-member election
observation mission deployed by the Council of Europe. In a statement
issued on June 1, the mission concluded that the Armenian authorities’
handling of the polls was largely "in compliance with European
standards." The monitors said "serious deficiencies" observed in some
polling stations did not call into question the overall legitimacy
of the official vote.

In what is becoming a pattern within the former Soviet republics,
the findings of the European observers sharply contrasted with
widespread vote rigging and other cases of fraud reported by opposition
representatives, the Armenian media and local election monitors. The
country’s largest vote-monitoring organization "It’s Your Choice,"
reported a plethora of irregularities, which had marred previous
Armenian elections. In its preliminary report, the group said "there
are insufficient grounds to believe that these elections passed the
threshold of being democratic, fair and transparent" (Aravot, June 3).

Not surprisingly, the main opposition HAK demanded a re-run of what
Ter-Petrosian called "the ugliest election in Armenia’s history." The
18-party alliance decided against taking up its 13 seats within the
municipal assembly. The normally cautious ARF also denounced the
elections as undemocratic (RFE/RL’s Armenian service, June 1). Even
the pro-government BHK has not officially recognized their disputed
outcome. The party, widely seen as the support base for Sarksyan’s
predecessor Robert Kocharian, is reportedly dragging its feet over
such recognition in the hope of gaining control over several Yerevan
districts.

The BHK has few other bargaining chips in its ongoing haggling with
the HHK and Sarksyan. Local commentators agreed that the Armenian
president has cemented his power, and is now less dependent on his
establishment allies. As the Yerevan daily Kapital characterized it
in a June 5 editorial, "The elections in the capital have made Serzh
Sarksyan’s authority more monolithic."

Accordingly, even assuming that the vote was rigged, the HHK landslide
was a setback for the Ter-Petrosian-led opposition. Armenians
have traditionally shown strong interest in national politics only
during presidential races and have proven far more indifferent to
parliamentary and local elections. Ter-Petrosian’s HAK clearly failed
to reverse this phenomenon, despite conducting a vigorous election
campaign. According to the CEC, only around 53 percent of Yerevan’s
770,000 eligible voters went to the polls on May 31. The real voter
turnout might well have been even lower.

Official figures suggest Ter-Petrosian won in absolute terms, more than
twice as many votes in Yerevan than during the 2008 presidential ballot
as the HAK gained in the local elections. On June 1 Aravot another
daily generally sympathetic to the opposition, claimed that this had
resulted from, "bad political management and a lack of elementary
organization." Leaders of the Heritage Party, another major opposition
force that chose not to contest the mayoral elections, criticized
the HAK in equally strong terms on June 5 (Hayots Ashkhar, June 6).

In an apparent effort to broaden its appeal, on June 3 the HAK urged
all "democratic" forces, notably the ARF, to support its efforts
to effect regime change in Armenia (, June 3). The call
was extraordinary given the long history of hostility between the
Ter-Petrosian camp and the ARF. The nationalist party, which was
controversially banned by Ter-Petrosian in 1994, has yet to respond
to the call.

As he again rallied thousands of supporters in downtown Yerevan on
June 1, the charismatic ex-president promised to formulate a plan of
further opposition activities at the next HAK rally scheduled for June
12. Jamestown witnessed him declaring: "Until we seriously analyze the
situation, and the trends relating to our chances and those of the
authorities, we will not lead the people into any adventure." This
was an additional indication that Ter-Petrosian will avoid staging
the type of non-stop anti-government protests that almost brought
him back to power in the aftermath of the 2008 election.