ARMENIA PREPARES FOR PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
Parliamentary elections will be held in Armenia on May 6. The elections hold several important implications for the country. First, the country’s leadership has promised that these elections will be the cleanest held in Armenia so far. As can be understood from other reports, this will be an important precondition for continued Western support to Armenia. However, all elections held in the country to date have drawn international criticism.
Second, a coalition of opposition parties, the Armenian National Congress (ANC), presents a serious threat to the authorities. The ANC was created by former President Levon Ter-Petrossian, Serzh Sargsyan’s major competitor during the presidential elections of 2008, and contains 17 other parties and groups in addition to Ter-Petrossian’s own party Armenian National Movement (ANM).
Third, due to some legislative restrictions, several political parties active in Armenia in the 1990s can no longer participate in elections. In particular, this applies to the parties of former Prime Minister Vazgen Manukian and Soviet-era dissident Paruyr Hayrikian. These and a number of other political leaders are therefore likely to leave politics, leaving the remaining political forces to bear a greater responsibility for the country’s future.
Fourth, the fate of the current coalition government led by Tigran Sargsyan, member of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) leadership, is unclear. The second largest member of the coalition, the Prosperous Armenia party (Bargavach Hayastan), is very active at the pre-electoral stage and is likely to attract voters from the RPA, which currently holds a majority in the parliament and is able to pass legislation alone. Instead, the third coalition party, Country of Law (Orinats Yerkir), looks rather weak and may according to some estimates not be able to attract the 5 percent of votes necessary to pass the threshold for entering parliament.
41 deputies out of 131 will be elected through majority voting in constituencies. All non-government parties including the ANC bloc have demanded that majority voting be eliminated and that a purely proportional system be introduced, claiming that the majority constituencies largely serve to elect people who support the RPA while in Parliament. However, the National Assembly controlled by the RPA rejected this proposal. Majority voting remains the only possibility for the RPA to support representatives of business as candidates during the elections as the party has fulfilled President Sargsyan’s promise to exclude any businessmen from its proportional lists. However, the law does not prohibit a person included in a party list from running for a majority vote as well.
Almost all parties struggling against the majority vote presented candidates in the majority constituencies. In particular, the ANC has presented its candidates in 37 out of 41 constituencies. One especially tough struggle is expected in one of the constituencies where Samvel Aleksanyan, a big businessman, meets Nikol Pashinyan, one of the top members of ANC. The participating parties have had difficulties deciding on the order of individuals in their lists. This was naturally more difficult for ANC, even as 8 of its 18 organizations do not participate in these elections for different reasons. However, the Central Electoral Commission has already registered the eight political parties and one bloc (the ANC) which have presented bids for participation. An ordinary pre-election campaign is now underway.
One serious problem facing the elections, and the country in general, is the lack of trust between the authorities and the population. In particular, a question frequently discussed among the Armenian public these days is whether the RPA is using administrative resources, the levers the RPA possesses as the party currently in power, to affect the vote of May 6 in its favor. Another hot topic is the fact that according to the police, the number of voters is now higher than ten years ago, whereas the National Statistical Service has earlier reported that, based on the census held last October, Armenia’s current population is lower than it was ten years ago. The police were quick to explain that these numbers do not necessarily coincide and that they have their own statistical sources. However, a majority of Armenians does not find these explanations credible and take the discrepancies as evidence of misconduct by the authorities. While the authorities have stated that the vote on May 6 will serve to rebuild public trust, they are so far unsuccessful in fulfilling this goal.
