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THE CAUCASUS: BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY
Politkom.ru
July 23 2012
Russia
by Sergey Markedonov, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Strategic
and International Studies, Washington, D.C., USA
The presidential election took place in the unrecognized
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) on 19 July [ 2012]. For various reasons
this election campaign merits serious attention. A considerable number
of commentators hastened to call it an "election with no mystery"
and a "struggle with a known result." To illustrate, the political
editor of the special resource Commonspace.eu devoted to examining
the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict noted that the July campaign in the
NKR "changed little both inside the country, in Karabakh, and in the
context of the ongoing talks on settling the conflict. Politics in
Nagornyy Karabakh has been to a significant degree in stagnation for
the last five years, and thanks to the efforts of the candidate from
the opposition Vitali Balasanyan, the election campaign experienced
some small excitement for the first time in many years. The result,
nonetheless, was altogether as expected. It is quite unlikely that
Karabakh will see any serious changes in the present context." But
how justified is such pessimism?
In fact, to state that there is a certain political stagnation in
the NKR is not sufficient. The factors that led to such a result
must be understood. And how strong the stagnation is if during the
election the incumbent president's chief opponent, who despite all
the existing administrative resources receives almost a third of the
number of those who took part in the voting. And generally speaking,
whether relying on electoral arithmetic alone is sufficient when
analysing the results of the election.
In fact, the last election in the NKR differed fundamentally as
compared with the recent campaigns in other de facto formations of
post-Soviet space in terms of the lack of surprises. In Karabakh the
leader was not replaced, as did happen in the Dniester Region or in
South Ossetia, where the proprietors of the presidential offices for
many years Eduard Kokoity and Igor Smirnov were forced to leave. Allow
me to mention, leave under serious pressure from opponents. And with
the serious resistance of the outgoing politicians. Together with, to
put it mildly, the ambiguous position of the Kremlin. That is to say,
in a tough competitive battle. Igor Smirnov lost the presidential
campaign (he did not even make it to a second round), while Eduard
Kokoity, without the possibility of fighting for his third term,
tried unsuccessfully to realize a "successor" operation. As a result
[came] the social awakening of South Ossetia, unprecedented since
the start of the 2000s, the appearance of fierce opposition leaders
(especially Alla Jioeva), and the coming to power of a new president
(Leonid Tibilov) together with a radical personnel reshuffle inside
the government and the intensification of party construction. In the
Dniester Region, the new presidential team headed by the young leader
Yevgeniy Shevchuk took the leading roles. Last year's election of
the president of Abkhazia stands somewhat alone in this group since
it was unusual because of the death of Sergey Baghapsh, who scored
his last electoral victory in December 2009.
But the Abkhazian presidential election was also a game without
a result announced in advance. The three main rivals (the future
beneficiary Aleksandr Ankvab, Sergey Shamba, and Raul Khadzhimba)
waged the struggle until the last day without absolute certainty of any
success. The parliamentary elections in Abkhazia in 2012 were even more
competitive. The deputy corps, beginning with speaker Nugzar Ashuba,
changed substantially. Only three of the 35 people's choices reaffirmed
their status. At the same time, the republic administration must also
be given its due. Apparently it sensed the demand for changes and as
a result refused to save the sinking ship of the "party of power"
United Abkhazia. Against this background of the "replacement of
persons" and some attempts to "replace the signposts," the Nagornyy
Karabakh election campaign of 2012 did not seem an intriguing event
in its preliminary and initial stages. All the parliamentary factions
supported the republic's incumbent President Bako Sahakyan. In that
way the "creative experience" of five years ago where deputies were
already expressing their support of a "single candidate" was repeated.
Later on one of the participants in the run-up election campaign,
Valeri Khachatryan, who had withdrawn as a candidate, also announced
his support specifically of Sahakyan. An interesting clash also
arose in the relations between Dashnaktsutyun [Armenian Revolutionary
Federation] and Vitali Balasanyan, the ex-minister of defence and one
of the candidates for the presidential post. For many years Balasanyan
was a member of the faction of Dashnaks [party], but before the start
of the presidential campaign, the oldest Armenian party terminated its
cooperation with him. The only party that supported the ex-minister
of defence was Movement-88, which is not represented in the present
makeup of the Nagornyy Karabakh parliament (elected in 2010).
Is this stagnation? Let us not rush to affix labels and draw final
conclusions. On the one hand, there is a great temptation to link the
2012 election and the previous campaigns (the 2007 presidential one
where Bako Sahakyan got 85.12 per cent, and the 2010 parliamentary
ones) into a kind of single trend. One should pay attention to the
idea that based on the level of competition, the 2010 elections
differed as compared with the previous campaigns, and for the better.
Many fierce opposition politicians did not take part in the struggle
for the deputy mandates. Notably, the silver medal winner of the
2007 presidential campaign, NKR ex-deputy minister of foreign affairs
Masis Mailyan, whom people remember for his tough polemics with Bako
Sahakyan during the presidential campaign. On the eve of the election,
in commenting on the domestic political situation, Mailyan stated:
"I think that the election will go normally and a pro-regime majority
will be in parliament, since three of the four parties will certainly
get in." Touching on the question of public election run-up sentiments,
he emphasized that the population is "taking a very calm attitude
towards the election they are waiting for," since no real struggle
between the regime and the opposition is envisioned. Outside observers
did not fail to note this fact. To illustrate, in the annual report
"Freedom in the World" prepared by Freedom House, the NKR was noted as
an "unfree country," which was in that way compared with Azerbaijan,
although earlier it had always held a higher line in the rating.
But on the other hand, several features of fundamental importance must
certainly be noted. In the first place, the definite social-political
decline in the NKR in recent years is directly related to the decline
in security in this cooled but not extinguished "hotspot" of Eurasia.
Take just this summer! Incidents on the line of contact [with
Azerbaijan] continued even during the official visit of the US
Secretary of State to the South Caucasus! Sizing up the power positions
of the opponent has today become a much more important component
of the negotiating process. And we see how each new statement of
"compromises achieved" and "progress" is almost inevitably accompanied
by the latest batch of violations of ceasefire agreements. In this
connection the problems of security make the democratic factors
secondary. Other de facto states of post-Soviet space also had similar
experience, with certain adjustments and stipulations. To illustrate,
a direct result of the aggravation in Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia was
the postponement of the parliamentary elections scheduled for 24
November 2001 to 2 March 2002. But perhaps the clearest example on
this level is South Ossetia. In conditions of the "defrosting of the
conflict" in 2004-2008, the entire internal agenda in the republic
was in effect cut back. And the revival of the compe titive political
process began already after Russia's recognition of the republic and
the minimization of the "Georgian factor." One can argue about whether
Moscow's decision on 26 August 2008 was correct or not, but it helped
South Ossetia secure the minimum of security which made it possible for
both Alla Jioyeva and Leonid Tibilov to appear in the political arena
and in the end to destroy Eduard Kokoity's monopoly. Even though the
Kremlin hardly had any strategic intentions for the democratization of
the republic. But despite all its powerful influence on the situation
in South Ossetia, even it is by no means omnipotent.
In the second place, in the case of the NKR, the crisis of so-called
"competitive democratization" is a much more important topic.
According to the justifiable comment by the British specialist
Laurence Broers, "as unrecognized formations, the de facto states
have come a good way in demonstrating compliance with the formal
"markers" of democracy (regular elections and correct procedures)
and projecting a democratic image to the outside world. One could
have defined... the dynamics of "competitive democratization" and the
attempt to demonstrate superficially the recognizable indicators of
democracy to Western observers as significant in comparison with the
mother state.
Such a situation probably existed in the middle of the first decade of
the new century. But the dynamics had changed substantially by the end
of the first decade of the 2000s. The norm "first the standards and
then the status" was terribly discredited after the independence of
Kosovo was recognized. And this perception was reinforced in 2008 when
the great powers were recognizing de facto states in accordance with
their own geopolitical reasons rather than because this independence
was de facto "earned" by the formations. The political elite of the
NKR for many years considered democracy as an important resource of
political competition with Baku. For many years, according to the
ratings of the well-known international organization Freedom House,
the level of freedom in the NKR was higher than Azerbaijan's. That made
it possible for politicians not only in the unrecognized republic
but also in Armenia, as well as representatives of the diaspora
and experts in the West, to say that an important reason for the
self-determination of Karabakh was the higher level of freedom in it
than in the "mother state." Today, thanks to the West's well-known
indifference towards and disinterest in issues of democratization in
the NKR, this resource no longer seems too effective.
But even so the 2012 elections, after beginning without any intrigue,
did not become an all-conquering triumph of the administrative
resource. Vitali Balasanyan offered serious competition to the
incumbent leader and in the struggle with him got 32.5 per cent. For
comparison. In the last elections, the "silver medal winner" got
slightly more than 12 per cent. Sahakyan himself as compared with the
result of five years ago reduced his indicators to 66.7 per cent of
the votes. At the same time, the problem of the NKR as a political
actor was the main issue of the run-up election debate, unlike in
other de facto formations. "If I am going to be elected president,
the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic will become a party to the negotiations,
not an object of but an actor in the negotiations," Balasanyan said
during his election campaign. And it was specifically the defence of
special approaches differing from "greater Armenia" that was one of
the central themes of the opposition candidate. In that way, despite
all the existing temptations, one should not rush to draw conclusions
on the establishment of a "stagnation" trend. The NKR did not receive
a new president. But then a new strong opposition leader able to
consolidate the protest sentiments is perfectly possible. Although
today such predictions are still premature.
Elections in the NKR, unlike the campaigns in Abkhazia or South
Ossetia, are not a subject of lively debate among the leading
international players. Here there is no acute competition of
evaluations either. Neither the West nor Russia recognizes the
legality of the Karabakh election campaigns. But all that does not
reduce the interest in the unrecognized elections by social activists
and even politicians from different countries whose geography (once
again in comparison with other unrecognized republics of Eurasia)
is much broader. To illustrate, in 2012 observing the voting were 88
people from 22 countries, including the United States, Canada (the
well-known Canadian politician and liberal deputy Jim Karygiannis came
to observe the election in the NKR), Uruguay, Israel, and Argentina.
This attention, which is by no means always strictly related to
particular state interests, helps preserve a certain aura of democratic
romanticism around the NKR which Nagorno-Karabakh politicians and
public figures can use to minimize the costs of possible periods
of stagnation.
[Translated from Russian]
Politkom.ru
July 23 2012
Russia
by Sergey Markedonov, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Strategic
and International Studies, Washington, D.C., USA
The presidential election took place in the unrecognized
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) on 19 July [ 2012]. For various reasons
this election campaign merits serious attention. A considerable number
of commentators hastened to call it an "election with no mystery"
and a "struggle with a known result." To illustrate, the political
editor of the special resource Commonspace.eu devoted to examining
the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict noted that the July campaign in the
NKR "changed little both inside the country, in Karabakh, and in the
context of the ongoing talks on settling the conflict. Politics in
Nagornyy Karabakh has been to a significant degree in stagnation for
the last five years, and thanks to the efforts of the candidate from
the opposition Vitali Balasanyan, the election campaign experienced
some small excitement for the first time in many years. The result,
nonetheless, was altogether as expected. It is quite unlikely that
Karabakh will see any serious changes in the present context." But
how justified is such pessimism?
In fact, to state that there is a certain political stagnation in
the NKR is not sufficient. The factors that led to such a result
must be understood. And how strong the stagnation is if during the
election the incumbent president's chief opponent, who despite all
the existing administrative resources receives almost a third of the
number of those who took part in the voting. And generally speaking,
whether relying on electoral arithmetic alone is sufficient when
analysing the results of the election.
In fact, the last election in the NKR differed fundamentally as
compared with the recent campaigns in other de facto formations of
post-Soviet space in terms of the lack of surprises. In Karabakh the
leader was not replaced, as did happen in the Dniester Region or in
South Ossetia, where the proprietors of the presidential offices for
many years Eduard Kokoity and Igor Smirnov were forced to leave. Allow
me to mention, leave under serious pressure from opponents. And with
the serious resistance of the outgoing politicians. Together with, to
put it mildly, the ambiguous position of the Kremlin. That is to say,
in a tough competitive battle. Igor Smirnov lost the presidential
campaign (he did not even make it to a second round), while Eduard
Kokoity, without the possibility of fighting for his third term,
tried unsuccessfully to realize a "successor" operation. As a result
[came] the social awakening of South Ossetia, unprecedented since
the start of the 2000s, the appearance of fierce opposition leaders
(especially Alla Jioeva), and the coming to power of a new president
(Leonid Tibilov) together with a radical personnel reshuffle inside
the government and the intensification of party construction. In the
Dniester Region, the new presidential team headed by the young leader
Yevgeniy Shevchuk took the leading roles. Last year's election of
the president of Abkhazia stands somewhat alone in this group since
it was unusual because of the death of Sergey Baghapsh, who scored
his last electoral victory in December 2009.
But the Abkhazian presidential election was also a game without
a result announced in advance. The three main rivals (the future
beneficiary Aleksandr Ankvab, Sergey Shamba, and Raul Khadzhimba)
waged the struggle until the last day without absolute certainty of any
success. The parliamentary elections in Abkhazia in 2012 were even more
competitive. The deputy corps, beginning with speaker Nugzar Ashuba,
changed substantially. Only three of the 35 people's choices reaffirmed
their status. At the same time, the republic administration must also
be given its due. Apparently it sensed the demand for changes and as
a result refused to save the sinking ship of the "party of power"
United Abkhazia. Against this background of the "replacement of
persons" and some attempts to "replace the signposts," the Nagornyy
Karabakh election campaign of 2012 did not seem an intriguing event
in its preliminary and initial stages. All the parliamentary factions
supported the republic's incumbent President Bako Sahakyan. In that
way the "creative experience" of five years ago where deputies were
already expressing their support of a "single candidate" was repeated.
Later on one of the participants in the run-up election campaign,
Valeri Khachatryan, who had withdrawn as a candidate, also announced
his support specifically of Sahakyan. An interesting clash also
arose in the relations between Dashnaktsutyun [Armenian Revolutionary
Federation] and Vitali Balasanyan, the ex-minister of defence and one
of the candidates for the presidential post. For many years Balasanyan
was a member of the faction of Dashnaks [party], but before the start
of the presidential campaign, the oldest Armenian party terminated its
cooperation with him. The only party that supported the ex-minister
of defence was Movement-88, which is not represented in the present
makeup of the Nagornyy Karabakh parliament (elected in 2010).
Is this stagnation? Let us not rush to affix labels and draw final
conclusions. On the one hand, there is a great temptation to link the
2012 election and the previous campaigns (the 2007 presidential one
where Bako Sahakyan got 85.12 per cent, and the 2010 parliamentary
ones) into a kind of single trend. One should pay attention to the
idea that based on the level of competition, the 2010 elections
differed as compared with the previous campaigns, and for the better.
Many fierce opposition politicians did not take part in the struggle
for the deputy mandates. Notably, the silver medal winner of the
2007 presidential campaign, NKR ex-deputy minister of foreign affairs
Masis Mailyan, whom people remember for his tough polemics with Bako
Sahakyan during the presidential campaign. On the eve of the election,
in commenting on the domestic political situation, Mailyan stated:
"I think that the election will go normally and a pro-regime majority
will be in parliament, since three of the four parties will certainly
get in." Touching on the question of public election run-up sentiments,
he emphasized that the population is "taking a very calm attitude
towards the election they are waiting for," since no real struggle
between the regime and the opposition is envisioned. Outside observers
did not fail to note this fact. To illustrate, in the annual report
"Freedom in the World" prepared by Freedom House, the NKR was noted as
an "unfree country," which was in that way compared with Azerbaijan,
although earlier it had always held a higher line in the rating.
But on the other hand, several features of fundamental importance must
certainly be noted. In the first place, the definite social-political
decline in the NKR in recent years is directly related to the decline
in security in this cooled but not extinguished "hotspot" of Eurasia.
Take just this summer! Incidents on the line of contact [with
Azerbaijan] continued even during the official visit of the US
Secretary of State to the South Caucasus! Sizing up the power positions
of the opponent has today become a much more important component
of the negotiating process. And we see how each new statement of
"compromises achieved" and "progress" is almost inevitably accompanied
by the latest batch of violations of ceasefire agreements. In this
connection the problems of security make the democratic factors
secondary. Other de facto states of post-Soviet space also had similar
experience, with certain adjustments and stipulations. To illustrate,
a direct result of the aggravation in Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia was
the postponement of the parliamentary elections scheduled for 24
November 2001 to 2 March 2002. But perhaps the clearest example on
this level is South Ossetia. In conditions of the "defrosting of the
conflict" in 2004-2008, the entire internal agenda in the republic
was in effect cut back. And the revival of the compe titive political
process began already after Russia's recognition of the republic and
the minimization of the "Georgian factor." One can argue about whether
Moscow's decision on 26 August 2008 was correct or not, but it helped
South Ossetia secure the minimum of security which made it possible for
both Alla Jioyeva and Leonid Tibilov to appear in the political arena
and in the end to destroy Eduard Kokoity's monopoly. Even though the
Kremlin hardly had any strategic intentions for the democratization of
the republic. But despite all its powerful influence on the situation
in South Ossetia, even it is by no means omnipotent.
In the second place, in the case of the NKR, the crisis of so-called
"competitive democratization" is a much more important topic.
According to the justifiable comment by the British specialist
Laurence Broers, "as unrecognized formations, the de facto states
have come a good way in demonstrating compliance with the formal
"markers" of democracy (regular elections and correct procedures)
and projecting a democratic image to the outside world. One could
have defined... the dynamics of "competitive democratization" and the
attempt to demonstrate superficially the recognizable indicators of
democracy to Western observers as significant in comparison with the
mother state.
Such a situation probably existed in the middle of the first decade of
the new century. But the dynamics had changed substantially by the end
of the first decade of the 2000s. The norm "first the standards and
then the status" was terribly discredited after the independence of
Kosovo was recognized. And this perception was reinforced in 2008 when
the great powers were recognizing de facto states in accordance with
their own geopolitical reasons rather than because this independence
was de facto "earned" by the formations. The political elite of the
NKR for many years considered democracy as an important resource of
political competition with Baku. For many years, according to the
ratings of the well-known international organization Freedom House,
the level of freedom in the NKR was higher than Azerbaijan's. That made
it possible for politicians not only in the unrecognized republic
but also in Armenia, as well as representatives of the diaspora
and experts in the West, to say that an important reason for the
self-determination of Karabakh was the higher level of freedom in it
than in the "mother state." Today, thanks to the West's well-known
indifference towards and disinterest in issues of democratization in
the NKR, this resource no longer seems too effective.
But even so the 2012 elections, after beginning without any intrigue,
did not become an all-conquering triumph of the administrative
resource. Vitali Balasanyan offered serious competition to the
incumbent leader and in the struggle with him got 32.5 per cent. For
comparison. In the last elections, the "silver medal winner" got
slightly more than 12 per cent. Sahakyan himself as compared with the
result of five years ago reduced his indicators to 66.7 per cent of
the votes. At the same time, the problem of the NKR as a political
actor was the main issue of the run-up election debate, unlike in
other de facto formations. "If I am going to be elected president,
the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic will become a party to the negotiations,
not an object of but an actor in the negotiations," Balasanyan said
during his election campaign. And it was specifically the defence of
special approaches differing from "greater Armenia" that was one of
the central themes of the opposition candidate. In that way, despite
all the existing temptations, one should not rush to draw conclusions
on the establishment of a "stagnation" trend. The NKR did not receive
a new president. But then a new strong opposition leader able to
consolidate the protest sentiments is perfectly possible. Although
today such predictions are still premature.
Elections in the NKR, unlike the campaigns in Abkhazia or South
Ossetia, are not a subject of lively debate among the leading
international players. Here there is no acute competition of
evaluations either. Neither the West nor Russia recognizes the
legality of the Karabakh election campaigns. But all that does not
reduce the interest in the unrecognized elections by social activists
and even politicians from different countries whose geography (once
again in comparison with other unrecognized republics of Eurasia)
is much broader. To illustrate, in 2012 observing the voting were 88
people from 22 countries, including the United States, Canada (the
well-known Canadian politician and liberal deputy Jim Karygiannis came
to observe the election in the NKR), Uruguay, Israel, and Argentina.
This attention, which is by no means always strictly related to
particular state interests, helps preserve a certain aura of democratic
romanticism around the NKR which Nagorno-Karabakh politicians and
public figures can use to minimize the costs of possible periods
of stagnation.
[Translated from Russian]