The three-party government coalition of Armenia has adopted a rather unexpected document whereby its member parties express their support for the nomination of current President Serzh Sargsyan two years before his expected reelection bid. They also declare their intention to help each other during the parliamentary elections scheduled for 2012. This can be regarded as very strong support for Sargsyan and his team, which they will certainly need. Considering the considerable political power of the coalition, the declaration promises to maintain its rule well beyond the upcoming elections.
BACKGROUND: On February 17, the three political parties of Armenia’s governing coalition signed a declaration according to which they will continue cooperating after their current government expires, i.e., the general elections in 2012. The document reads: “The parties of the Coalition … in the upcoming parliamentary elections will not strive to increase their political weight through contesting against each other or changing the correlation of forces within the Coalition”. This is in fact equivalent to forming a joint list of candidates of these parties for the elections.
Moreover, the three parties undertook the obligation to jointly support the candidacy of Sargsyan during the presidential elections of 2013. The Declaration states that “at the presidential elections the Political Coalition will come up with one single nomination in the person of the current President, thus creating guarantees of further continuity in the changes and sustainable development of our country for the next five years”. The governing coalition currently contains three parties; Sargsyan’s Republican Party of Armenia (RPA, with 63 mandates in the National Assembly), Bargavach Hayastan (Prosperous Armenia or PA with 26 mandates), and Orinats Yerkir (Country of Law or CL with 8 mandates). The coalition controls at least another three mandates beyond their factions. Hence, the coalition controls a total of 100 of the 131 mandates in the National Assembly.
The adoption of this declaration was rather unexpected, since it came soon after the February 12 Congress of the Prosperous Armenia party, during and after which no word was said about the possibility of its cooperation with the RPA after 2012. Moreover, PA leader Gagik Tsarukian announced during the Congress that that his party would demand the ruling RPA to protect the norms of democracy during the elections of 2012. This would seem to imply that the PA party was prepared to struggle actively in those elections. Immediately after the signing ceremony, Gagik Tsarukian told reporters that his party signed the declaration because the country “faces a number of social, political and military challenges”.
IMPLICATIONS: The signing of this declaration holds heavy political significance. First, it showed that the RPA is strong enough to force the PA party, the second largest party of the coalition, to follow the RPA’s policies. Second, it implies that the current political coalition will seek to maintain the existing status quo beyond the parliamentary elections of 2012, and that the next parliament will have roughly the same pattern of ruling factions and the same ratio of mandates as now, while the opposition may be different. It can be predicted that the RPA will take advantage of the administrative resources it possesses during the elections of 2012 and 2013.
Third, President Sargsyan and his team have secured more freedom for their actions against their political opponents, in particular against the movement led by Armenia’s first President Levon Ter-Petrosian. Fourth, Sargsyan and his team have obtained a carte blanche for their actions in the social sphere until 2018. The current government has initiated a number of programs whose implementation is scheduled for a period reaching as far as 2018 and even 2020. These programs include the creation of a European-style quality infrastructure as a means to access the European market; the formation of an e-society based on high-speed Internet; and the creation of several Free Economic Zones as vehicles to ensure rapid development of the country in the post-crisis period. The government will now be able to continue implementing such programs after the presidential elections of 2013. Finally, the ruling coalition and Sargsyan himself have also secured more freedom for their foreign policy, including policies related to Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenian-Turkish relations.
Thus, the Declaration signed on February 17 first of all provides additional leverage to the RPA and Sargsyan as it provides additional legitimacy to its actions in the currently tense situation in the country, where a wave of discontent is rising due to the continuing world economic crisis, exacerbated by rising food prices. In conditions where opposition factions seek to exploit the public discontent and in the light of events in the Middle East, the additional support of the coalition parties for the RPA is much needed.
The declaration’s signatories are careful to pledge that they will combat the causes of these problems. In particular, the declaration states that “the Political Coalition declares its resolve to take more courageous steps toward ensuring Armenia’s post-crisis progressive development and the improvement of the well-being of our people, placing special emphasis on comprehensive fight against corruption and significant reduction of the shadow economy”.
The declaration is especially beneficial to the smallest party of the coalition, the CL party. During the presidential elections of 2008 this party was in opposition and its leader Arthur Baghdasarian was the third in that race. However, it later joined the coalition and Baghdasarian has become Secretary of the President’s Security Council. For these reasons, this party has lost its popularity and, according to current estimates, could fail to enter the next parliament without external assistance. The declaration pledges such assistance to the CL party.
The position of the PA party is less obvious. Its leader Tsarukian is not a politician, but a businessman, and the RPA leadership has reportedly made great efforts and even used blackmailing to persuade the leadership of PA to join the February 17 document. The PA party was initially expected to participate separately in the coming two elections, thus breaking the political monopoly of the RPA. Moreover, it was expected to support Robert Kocharian, Armenia’s second President and a possible rival to Serzh Sagsyan, during the elections of 2013. The February 17 document annulled these expectations and there is no clarity over how this result was achieved.
CONCLUSIONS: The members of the three-party government coalition of Armenia which is led by the RPA have signed a declaration in which these parties confirmed that their coalition is stable and expressed readiness to continue their cooperation during and after the next general elections of 2012 and the presidential elections of 2013. In particular, they agreed to support Sargsyan in his re-election bid in 2013. Thus, the two smaller parties of the coalition, Prosperous Armenia and Country of Law, have agreed to follow the RPA rather than to act as independent players at least before 2018. As the coalition currently enjoys overwhelming power in Armenia, there is little doubt that it will indeed survive the upcoming elections and will have more freedom in implementing its plans both at home and in foreign affairs.
AUTHOR’S BIO: Haroutiun Khachatrian is an analyst on political and economic issues based in Yerevan, Armenia.