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Armenia: Rivals Up The Stakes

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  • Armenia: Rivals Up The Stakes

    Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
    Feb 14 2008


    Armenia: Rivals Up The Stakes


    Two main contenders in presidential poll claim that government
    employees are on their side.


    By Naira Melkumian in Yerevan (CRS No. 431 14-Feb-08)

    As the Armenian presidential contest heads towards the finishing
    line, tensions are rising between supporters of the two leading
    candidates, while the intentions of many voters remain unclear.

    The official candidate, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, and the man
    generally seen as his principal rival, former president Levon
    Ter-Petrosian, are engaged in a contest of wills, each claiming that
    the public is behind him.

    Ter-Petrosian's supporters have sought to undermine confidence in the
    Sarkisian camp by claiming that many government officials are on
    their side, while accusing the administration of pressuring employees
    to back its favoured candidate.

    It is difficult to judge what people's real voting intentions are.

    During a Ter-Petrosian rally in Yerevan on February 9, IWPR asked two
    men and a woman standing to one side whether they supported the
    former president. `We aren't for anyone, we just came to look and
    listen,' replied one of them.

    A few minutes later, they became less hesitant and volunteered the
    information that in the district administration offices where they
    work, their bosses noted down their passport details and instructed
    them to vote for the government's candidate or face losing their
    jobs.

    `How can we vote freely after that?' asked the woman.

    A member of staff at Armenia's institute of archaeology and
    ethnography said many people were choosing to keep their views to
    themselves for fear of suffering the consequences.

    `If people are asked, they may say that they are supporting the
    official candidate whereas in actual fact they may support the other
    candidate, Levon Ter-Petrosian,' she said. `There is undoubtedly
    fear, especially among people who have a business or a state-sector
    job.'

    Ahead of the February 19 ballot, several opinion polls suggest that
    Sarkisian has a commanding lead over his two main opponents,
    Ter-Petrosian and former speaker of parliament Artur Baghdasarian.
    Supporters of the two latter candidates say that the pollsters are
    not neutral, and that voters are afraid to express their real views.

    The Ter-Petrosian campaign team says between 80 and 100 people have
    suffered intimidation or lost their jobs for supporting the former
    president, and is compiling a list of names of people who have been
    punished in this fashion. These figures have not been confirmed
    independently.

    The authorities strongly deny these charges.

    `We need only transparent elections that are fair and inspire
    confidence,' said Sarkisian, answering questions in parliament.

    In the northern Lori region of Armenia, the governor heads the
    pro-government Republican Party but is allowing staff working under
    him to support the opposition.

    Arman Musinian, Ter-Petrosian's press secretary, said that this was a
    rare exception to the general rule.

    `There are some honest leaders within the state system who understand
    that people have the right to express their will and make a free
    choice,' said Musinian.

    Musinian said the Ter-Petrosian campaign headquarters constantly gets
    visits from people who work for the government, both in national
    ministries and local administrations.

    `Sometimes these are high-ranking people,' he said. `They ask for CDs
    or other materials, and even offer their help, but they try to do it
    surreptitiously because they are afraid of losing their jobs. These
    people run into not thousands but tens of thousands.'

    Ter-Petrosian has used his position as the first president of
    independent Armenia to target state-sector employees.

    In the first press conference he gave in the election campaign, he
    predicted that the whole `state pyramid' would collapse in the run-up
    to the vote. His supporters also predicted that he would win public
    backing from some state officials.

    Ter-Petrosian has won some support from other political forces, for
    example the Heritage Party of former foreign minister Raffi
    Hovannisian and the New Times party of Aram Karapetyan.

    He has also been backed by some senior members of the Yerkrapah
    Union, Armenia's largest veterans' organisation. It too has close
    ties to the government and the Republican Party. Ter-Petrosian was
    publicly endorsed by the party's branch in the northwestern region of
    Shirak during a rally in the regional centre Gyumri.

    His candidacy has in addition been endorsed by Test of Spirit, an
    influential organisation uniting veterans of the Karabakh war. The
    group is led by Sasun Mikaelian and Hakob Hakobian, both of them
    members of the ruling Republican faction in parliament.

    `We stand by our commander-in-chief with whom we waged and won the
    fight for freedom in Artsakh [Karabakh],' Mikaelian told a rally. `We
    are loyal to him.'

    The Republican party said on February 11 that the decision by
    Mikaelian and Hakobian to back Ter-Petrosian was not a sign of
    serious cracks emerging in the Sarkisian camp.

    `We are not worried about mass defections because our team is very
    strong, very stable, very powerful and you will see that once again
    on February 19,' party spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov told the A1plus
    news website. `The behaviour of one or two party members cannot be
    attributed to the whole party.'

    There were some press reports that 300 members of the pro-government
    Prosperous Armenia party had teamed up with Ter-Petrosian. However,
    there has been no public declaration to this effect, and party
    spokesman Baghdasar Mherian said only one person had left his party
    in recent times, and that was for reasons that had nothing to do with
    politics.

    Samvel Nikoyan, spokesman for the Republican Party, said predictions
    that the Ter-Petrosyan camp would draw off support from
    pro-government forces had been proven empty.

    `Time has shown that everything that was said was a propaganda
    instrument, mere wishful thinking,' said Nikoyan.

    Larisa Alaverdian, a former human rights ombudsman who now represents
    the Heritage Party in parliament, insists voters must be courageous
    enough to make up their own minds who they want to vote for on
    election day.

    `If we want to build a law-based state, then we need to drive the
    slave out of ourselves,' she said. `It ought to be a matter of pride
    for the state system if it contains people with different points of
    view. Such viewpoints shouldn't be reduced to `I love you' or `I
    don't love you', but should be articulated in a more civilised
    manner.'

    Naira Melkumian is a freelance journalist in Yerevan. Naira
    Bulghadaryan, correspondent for ArmeniaNow Online and the Civil
    Initiative Newspaper in Vanadzor, also contributed to this article.
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