DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT?
By Catherine Reilly
atic-deficit,1727
Thursday, February 26, 2009, 17:59
DEMOCRACY in Armenia is making little progress, a leading political
advisory body has claimed.
Sabine Freizer, Europe director with the influential International
Crisis Group (ICG), said that since its damning report on Armenia
in April 2008, scant improvements to the country’s nascent democracy
have been noted.
"There are still political prisoners in Armenia, there are still
trials going on, so no, the situation has not improved significantly,"
she told Metro Ã~Iireann last Friday.
The study, Picking up the Pieces, was released by the ICG last
April and referred to the country’s "flawed presidential election"
in February 2008, and subsequent "lethal crackdown against a peaceful
protest rally" organised by supporters of unsuccessful presidential
candidate Levon Ter-Petross-ian.
The report called for a more independent judiciary and stringent
tackling of corruption and cronyism within government. In 2008,
Transparency International ranked Armenia in 109th place out of 180
countries in a corruption survey.
According to Freizer: "The government has now solidified its position
in the country but there are still the problems of political prisoners,
of lack of dialogue between the opposition and the government. This
keeps the political situation quite tense and strange.
" Freizer said that resistance to dialogue exists on both sides, but
that a "thorough examination" of incidents that took place last March,
when demonstrators and police clashed in Yerevan after the disputed
elections, would be a "very important" factor in restoring dialogue.
"And really a prosecution of some of the police officers who were
involved, who used excessive force during those demonstrations,"
she added.
She also suggested that Armenia is much less adept at implementing
reform measures than publishing them.
"Armenia is facing a series of challenges," continued Freizer.
"As of right now, one of the biggest is the economic challenge of
the global crisis which is having a serious effect because Armenia
has a large population that works abroad – mainly in Russia – and
since Russia has been hit very badly by this crisis, the workers who
had been sending their salaries to families in Armenia have not been
able to do that, as a lot have lost their jobs."
Freizer also noted that international disputes such as the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan continue to affect Armenia
socially and financially.
"Due to this conflict, Armenia has to spend a large percentage of
its budget on the military, and basically remains very much in war
mode. Also, Armenia’s border with Turkey has been closed since the
mid-1990s and it is forced to de pend largely on Russia, both for
financial assistance and investment, and general economic trade and
cooperation."
Freizer believes that the international community hasn’t taken enough
high-level interest in assisting Armenia towards the resolution of
outstanding issues, including the Nagorno-Karabakh situation.
"There was a ceasefire signed in 1994," she commented, "but in the past
15 years there has not been any other document signed except for a very
short document last autumn [the so-called Moscow Declaration]. This
was facilitated directly by Russian President Medvedev. And that
shows that if high-level officials do get involved, the chances of
some degrees of compromise are higher.
"Instead, what we’ve had for the past six years is the OSCE Minsk
process, with three diplomat co-chairs [Russia, France, US] who are
regularly working on it, trying to negotiate between the sides."
However, she criticised the absence of a designated EU co-chair
in this diplomatic process, and the EU’s general approach to the
Nagorno-Karabakh situation.
"Now what generally happens is that Brussels works directly with
Armenia but doesn’t in any way touch the Nagorno-Karabakh [issue] in
any of its projects or proposals or programmes. It’s the same with [the
EU approach to] Azerbaijan. So Nagorno-Karabakh is kind of left as an
empty zone, which is very unusual in the middle of Europe, to have such
a situation as you do today in Karabakh."
She continued: "There needs to be much greater political involvement
in the talks. We are actually at a moment where there is optimism
that there might be an agreement on basic principles sometime this
year, but this optimism has kind of been in the air since 2005,
so this process is extremely slow. Now is really the time for more
international involvement."
Meanwhile, Freizer said that government-to-government funding to
Armenia should not proceed without tangible evidence of reform.
"It’s always very difficult to determine whether or not imposing
sanctions is actually going to hurt the right people. The problem
with making limits on aid is that sometimes the most vulnerable are
going to lose out on the humanitarian assistance."
She concluded: "We were focusing more on the kind of assistance that
goes to Armenian institutions. There’s really no point in throwing
money at institutions that refuse to reform. There needs to be pressure
put on Armenia to ensure that they actually implement their reforms
and not just talk about it in terms of rhetoric."
What is the Armenian govt’s view?
The 1 March protest was an attempted coup by the opposition, according
to the Armenian government.
President Sargsyan, just before he officially took his oath of office,
informed EU special envoy to the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby,
that his gove rnment is "ready to co-operate with all those who want
Armenia to develop", and that "those who incited recent riots had
committed a crime and should be punished".
On the issue of corruption, the Armenian government has initiated
an Anti-Corruption Council – headed by the prime minister – and the
Anti-Corruption Strategy Monitoring Commission.
In relation to dialogue with the opposition, Armenia’s Foreign Minister
Eduard Nalbandian is reported to have informed his Czech counterpart
last week that the Armenian government is ready for talks with the
opposition, but that it has so far failed to display a readiness
to talk.
Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg had told Nalbandian in
Prague that such a dialogue is essential for Armenia’s inclusion in
the EU’s Eastern Partnership programme, which offers six former Soviet
republics much closer ties with the bloc in return for political and
economic reforms.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
