FORMER ARMENIAN PRESIDENT JOINS RACE FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN 2008
by Grace Annan
Global Insight
October 29, 2007
On 26 October, the former president of Armenia, Lev Ter-Petrossian,
announced his candidature for the presidential elections in February
2008. Ter-Petrossian criticised the government’s record in the fight
against corruption, stating that the leadership was corrupt and
based on a "mafia-style regime" according to Agence France-Presse
(AFP). He further advocated a more docile stance towards neighbouring
Azerbaijan, with which relations are strained over the Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute. The decision to run for the presidency has brought some
competition into the race, which increasingly looked like a one-sided
affair in favour of the presidential appointee, the current Prime
Minister Serzh Sarkisian. Current president Robert Kocharian is taking
Ter-Petrossian’s candidacy seriously, as his reaction shows: Kocharian
promised a tough fight in which he would remind the electorate of
Ter-Petrossian’s "harsh" economic policy.
Significance:Armenia currently boasts an economic growth rate of
10% but its main obstacles, high levels of bureaucracy, wide-scale
corruption and poor infrastructure, as well as the embargo by
Turkey and Azerbaijan taint this record somewhat. Ter-Petrossian’s
announcement certainly brings some colour into the choice the
electorate has on 12 February 2008, and it will certainly annoy the
current main opposition candidate Artur Baghdasarian (see Armenia: 2
October 2007: ). Yet, his victory is far from a foregone conclusion
given the increasingly consolidated power in the hands of the
president, and the government’s capacity to filter election results in
their favour. Further, Ter-Petrossian had a somewhat mixed presidency
(1991-1998), and his economic policy and stance on Nagorno-Karabakh
brought about his downfall and he was succeeded by the then-Prime
Minister Kocharian. The current spat between Ter-Petrossian and
Kocharian is therefore a clash of policy-making.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
