Tweet
OPINION: AFTER MAY 6, IS A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION REDUNDANT?
By John Hughes
ArmeniaNow
07.05.12 | 14:37
Photo: www.president.am
The Republican Party of Armenia has walked away with the country after
yesterday, apparently gaining 73 seats in the next National Assembly.
RPA 73. Everybody Else 58. It is a stunning development, coming about
per a turnout of 62 percent of voters.
The conclusion defies real-world pattern. Following five years of
economic decline, the Armenian public turned out en masse to re-elect
leadership that didn't manage to progress beyond survival, while from
Britain's Gordon Brown to France's Nicolas Sarkozy, heads are being
lopped in other elections on the world-economic-crisis landscape.
Why? What makes Armenia different? The effectiveness of widespread
vote-buying may be one answer. The absence of believable alternatives
to the current regime may be another.
How this happened will be dissected by scientists in coming May 6
postmortems. The effect of what has happened will become clear in
the gestation period for next winter's presidential campaign, which
begins now.
RPA no longer needs a coalition. Not even, as a former Minister of
Foreign Affairs and current sidekick to Prosperous Armenia Party boss
Gagik Tsurakyan says is "one of a formal nature". If RPA was obliged
to play well with others in the tinder-box aftermath of Armenia's
2008 election, the party now owns the playground, the toys and the
lock to the gates.
The party of President Serzh Sargsyan owns the portfolio on every
ministerial position, and with what is likely to be a 7-over-majority
grip on the National Assembly, why would other parties even bother
to show up to vote on any act of legislature the Prime Minister would
bring to the floor?
If what existed before Sunday of anti-RPA sentiment could have been
called "opposition" it can now simply and finally be defined as
irrelevant. Its leader, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, went from being the
voice crying in the wilderness, to being the tree that fell in the
forest and nobody heard it. Ter-Petrosyan's 14-party bloc, the ANC,
barely made it onto the upcoming parliament roster. It gained seven
percent of the vote. Half a percent per party - 10 times per party
weaker than Heritage, whose leader Ter-Petrosyan dissed as being
mis-directed a year ago.
Going into Sunday, it was widely believed that this would be a vote in
which PAP would cut into RPA's dominance. Rather, just the opposite
has happened and now, what do you do if you are Tsarukyan? Even the
strongest man in Armenia - figuratively and, once, literally - has to
know his place against a political machine that cannot be arm-wrestled
into submission.
And what of Tsarukyan's political godfather, former president Robert
Kocharyan? He emerged in a rare interview a few days before the
election, to tantalize analysts' palates. Will he run for office in
2013? What place would Vartan Oskanian have on a Kocharyan ticket?
Whatever decisions might have gone into answering those questions,
probably became more gnarly when the Central Election Commission shut
the doors and opened the boxes Sunday night.
Was Sunday's election a referendum on public approval for Serzh
Sargsyan?
With a government in his pocket, apathy on his side, and party members
willing to persuade voters $25 at a time, does approval matter?
From: A. Papazian
By John Hughes
ArmeniaNow
07.05.12 | 14:37
Photo: www.president.am
The Republican Party of Armenia has walked away with the country after
yesterday, apparently gaining 73 seats in the next National Assembly.
RPA 73. Everybody Else 58. It is a stunning development, coming about
per a turnout of 62 percent of voters.
The conclusion defies real-world pattern. Following five years of
economic decline, the Armenian public turned out en masse to re-elect
leadership that didn't manage to progress beyond survival, while from
Britain's Gordon Brown to France's Nicolas Sarkozy, heads are being
lopped in other elections on the world-economic-crisis landscape.
Why? What makes Armenia different? The effectiveness of widespread
vote-buying may be one answer. The absence of believable alternatives
to the current regime may be another.
How this happened will be dissected by scientists in coming May 6
postmortems. The effect of what has happened will become clear in
the gestation period for next winter's presidential campaign, which
begins now.
RPA no longer needs a coalition. Not even, as a former Minister of
Foreign Affairs and current sidekick to Prosperous Armenia Party boss
Gagik Tsurakyan says is "one of a formal nature". If RPA was obliged
to play well with others in the tinder-box aftermath of Armenia's
2008 election, the party now owns the playground, the toys and the
lock to the gates.
The party of President Serzh Sargsyan owns the portfolio on every
ministerial position, and with what is likely to be a 7-over-majority
grip on the National Assembly, why would other parties even bother
to show up to vote on any act of legislature the Prime Minister would
bring to the floor?
If what existed before Sunday of anti-RPA sentiment could have been
called "opposition" it can now simply and finally be defined as
irrelevant. Its leader, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, went from being the
voice crying in the wilderness, to being the tree that fell in the
forest and nobody heard it. Ter-Petrosyan's 14-party bloc, the ANC,
barely made it onto the upcoming parliament roster. It gained seven
percent of the vote. Half a percent per party - 10 times per party
weaker than Heritage, whose leader Ter-Petrosyan dissed as being
mis-directed a year ago.
Going into Sunday, it was widely believed that this would be a vote in
which PAP would cut into RPA's dominance. Rather, just the opposite
has happened and now, what do you do if you are Tsarukyan? Even the
strongest man in Armenia - figuratively and, once, literally - has to
know his place against a political machine that cannot be arm-wrestled
into submission.
And what of Tsarukyan's political godfather, former president Robert
Kocharyan? He emerged in a rare interview a few days before the
election, to tantalize analysts' palates. Will he run for office in
2013? What place would Vartan Oskanian have on a Kocharyan ticket?
Whatever decisions might have gone into answering those questions,
probably became more gnarly when the Central Election Commission shut
the doors and opened the boxes Sunday night.
Was Sunday's election a referendum on public approval for Serzh
Sargsyan?
With a government in his pocket, apathy on his side, and party members
willing to persuade voters $25 at a time, does approval matter?
From: A. Papazian