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WEST GIVES ARMENIAN LEADERS A BOOST AFTER DISPUTED ELECTION WIN
Emil Danielyan
EurasiaNet, NY
May 15 2007
The United States and the European Union have joined Western election
observers in praising the conduct of Armenia's weekend parliamentary
elections, which were controversially swept by political allies of
President Robert Kocharian and Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian.
Analysts and civil society activists say that the development will
give the Armenian leaders more ammunition to dismiss allegations
of vote rigging made by their demoralized opponents, local media,
and civic groups.
The May 12 elections were judged largely democratic by some 400
observers mostly deployed by the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and its Warsaw-based Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The OSCE-led monitoring mission
also comprised parliamentarians from the European Union (EU) and the
Council of Europe. In a preliminary report released in Yerevan on May
13, the mission described the vote as a significant improvement over
previous Armenian elections tainted by serious fraud. [For details,
see the Eurasia Insight archive].
The EU welcomed the observers' findings a few hours later. Germany,
which currently holds the bloc's rotating presidency, said in a
statement that the elections were "on the whole, conducted fairly,
freely and largely in accordance with the international commitments
which Armenia had entered into." In a separate statement, the EU's
foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, congratulated "the people of
Armenia on the improvements in the conduct of the parliamentary
elections."
Both Germany and Solana indicated that Armenia will now be able to
forge closer links with the EU under the European Neighborhood Policy
(ENP) framework. EU officials had for months been warning that a
recently negotiated set of related initiatives could be put on hold
in the event of fresh electoral fraud.
"This is good news for EU-Armenia relations, in particular as they
were the first elections after Armenia and the EU agreed last year
on a wide-reaching Action Plan," Solana said.
The United States was more cautious in praising the Armenian
authorities' handling of the election. "Our judgment so far is that
this election was an improvement toward international standards,"
read a statement issued by the US embassy in Yerevan on May 15. The
statement noted that long-term OSCE observers will continue to
analyze the official vote results and might still detect more
serious irregularities. "Part of the election process is a careful
consideration of all issues raised in connection with the election,
including several serious allegations of fraud or intimidation which
may have affected the outcome of some of the races," the embassy said.
Even so, the US reaction was markedly different from Washington's
strong criticism of the last Armenian parliamentary and presidential
elections in 2003. Armenian observers believe Yerevan is now well
placed to receive the first major installment of $236 million in
additional US economic assistance from the Millenium Challenge Account
(MCA) program.
"Armenia's leaders have never enjoyed such positive post-election
treatment by the international community before," said Tevan Poghosian,
director of the International Center for Human Development, a
Yerevan-based private think-tank.
"Assuming that the OSCE's final election report will mirror
their preliminary findings, Armenia's image abroad will improve
considerably," agreed Levon Zurabian, an independent political
scientist. "The authorities will be able to act with more confidence
both in the international arena and at home."
Indeed, Western criticisms of the past Armenian elections gave the
Armenian opposition a significant argument to challenge the legitimacy
of Kocharian's almost decade-long rule. The OSCE's latest election
verdict will enable Kocharian and his heir apparent, Prime Minister
Sarkisian, to claim the moral high ground with the opposition over
election results giving three pro-government parties overwhelming
control of Armenia's new parliament. Sarkisian's Republican Party of
Armenia (RPA), the official election winner, alone will control at
least 65 seats in the 131-member National Assembly. Another 40 other
seats will be held by two other parties loyal to President Kocharian,
Prosperous Armenia and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. [For
details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].
The legislative elections were widely seen as the rehearsal for
next year's presidential vote, in which Prime Minister Sarkisian is
expected to run. Despite the vote's positive assessment by the West,
few Armenian analysts and civil society representatives consider
it democratic. "There seem to have been no serious incidents in
polling stations during both voting and counting of ballots, which
is undoubtedly a positive phenomenon," the Yerevan daily Aravot said
in an editorial. "But even to say that the elections moved a little
closer to European standards would be a mockery of those standards."
At a May 14 press conference, civil society leaders echoed that
frustration. "If this is an international standard, we can honestly
say we don't need these international standards," commented Boris
Navashardian, president of the Yerevan Press Club. "The election is
not election day only," added Larisa Minasyan, executive director of
the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation - Armenia. "We're
talking about the whole process." [Both the Open Society Institute
Assistance Foundation - Armenia and EurasiaNet.org operate under the
auspices of the Open Society Institute].
Virtually all major opposition parties and media critical of the
government claim that the outcome of the poll was essentially decided
by massive vote buying by the RPA and Prosperous Armenia. Throughout
voting day there were numerous reports of busloads of presumably
bribed voters transported to polling stations in Yerevan and other
parts of the country. Boris Frlec, head of the ODIHR mission, said
his observers also witnessed the busing.
"Our observers have reported a number of cases where vote buying
on election day could be indicated, but very difficult to prove,"
Frlec told journalists on May 13. "There were groups of people who
were waiting in lines, there were groups of people seen with some
money and so on. But we could include in our report only things that
were seen and actually proven."
In the months preceding the vote, the Armenian press had reported on
the widespread collection of voters' passport data by local government
officials and RPA and Prosperous Armenia activists.
Representatives of the two parties also reportedly visited or
telephoned households across the country to ascertain for whom they
planned to vote. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Some opposition leaders now say that was aimed at clarifying the names
of hundreds of thousands of Armenians who live and work abroad but
remain listed in voter registries. They allege that the authorities
handed out a comparable number of fake passports to bribed voters
who also cast ballots in place of the absent citizens.
"We have grounds to assert that there were mobile voting groups
of people, and each member of those groups had about 10 passports
bearing their pictures but [printed with] the names of other people,"
Nikol Pashinian, a leader of the radical Impeachment bloc, charged
at a May 13 opposition rally in Yerevan.
In response, the police promptly laughed off the allegations,
questioning the opposition member's sanity. Pashinian has, in turn,
called for a selective verification of official documents which voters
had to sign before casting ballots.
Editor's Note: Emil Danielyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and
political analyst. Elizabeth Owen, EurasiaNet's Caucasus news editor,
contributed reporting to this article.
Emil Danielyan
EurasiaNet, NY
May 15 2007
The United States and the European Union have joined Western election
observers in praising the conduct of Armenia's weekend parliamentary
elections, which were controversially swept by political allies of
President Robert Kocharian and Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian.
Analysts and civil society activists say that the development will
give the Armenian leaders more ammunition to dismiss allegations
of vote rigging made by their demoralized opponents, local media,
and civic groups.
The May 12 elections were judged largely democratic by some 400
observers mostly deployed by the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and its Warsaw-based Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The OSCE-led monitoring mission
also comprised parliamentarians from the European Union (EU) and the
Council of Europe. In a preliminary report released in Yerevan on May
13, the mission described the vote as a significant improvement over
previous Armenian elections tainted by serious fraud. [For details,
see the Eurasia Insight archive].
The EU welcomed the observers' findings a few hours later. Germany,
which currently holds the bloc's rotating presidency, said in a
statement that the elections were "on the whole, conducted fairly,
freely and largely in accordance with the international commitments
which Armenia had entered into." In a separate statement, the EU's
foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, congratulated "the people of
Armenia on the improvements in the conduct of the parliamentary
elections."
Both Germany and Solana indicated that Armenia will now be able to
forge closer links with the EU under the European Neighborhood Policy
(ENP) framework. EU officials had for months been warning that a
recently negotiated set of related initiatives could be put on hold
in the event of fresh electoral fraud.
"This is good news for EU-Armenia relations, in particular as they
were the first elections after Armenia and the EU agreed last year
on a wide-reaching Action Plan," Solana said.
The United States was more cautious in praising the Armenian
authorities' handling of the election. "Our judgment so far is that
this election was an improvement toward international standards,"
read a statement issued by the US embassy in Yerevan on May 15. The
statement noted that long-term OSCE observers will continue to
analyze the official vote results and might still detect more
serious irregularities. "Part of the election process is a careful
consideration of all issues raised in connection with the election,
including several serious allegations of fraud or intimidation which
may have affected the outcome of some of the races," the embassy said.
Even so, the US reaction was markedly different from Washington's
strong criticism of the last Armenian parliamentary and presidential
elections in 2003. Armenian observers believe Yerevan is now well
placed to receive the first major installment of $236 million in
additional US economic assistance from the Millenium Challenge Account
(MCA) program.
"Armenia's leaders have never enjoyed such positive post-election
treatment by the international community before," said Tevan Poghosian,
director of the International Center for Human Development, a
Yerevan-based private think-tank.
"Assuming that the OSCE's final election report will mirror
their preliminary findings, Armenia's image abroad will improve
considerably," agreed Levon Zurabian, an independent political
scientist. "The authorities will be able to act with more confidence
both in the international arena and at home."
Indeed, Western criticisms of the past Armenian elections gave the
Armenian opposition a significant argument to challenge the legitimacy
of Kocharian's almost decade-long rule. The OSCE's latest election
verdict will enable Kocharian and his heir apparent, Prime Minister
Sarkisian, to claim the moral high ground with the opposition over
election results giving three pro-government parties overwhelming
control of Armenia's new parliament. Sarkisian's Republican Party of
Armenia (RPA), the official election winner, alone will control at
least 65 seats in the 131-member National Assembly. Another 40 other
seats will be held by two other parties loyal to President Kocharian,
Prosperous Armenia and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. [For
details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].
The legislative elections were widely seen as the rehearsal for
next year's presidential vote, in which Prime Minister Sarkisian is
expected to run. Despite the vote's positive assessment by the West,
few Armenian analysts and civil society representatives consider
it democratic. "There seem to have been no serious incidents in
polling stations during both voting and counting of ballots, which
is undoubtedly a positive phenomenon," the Yerevan daily Aravot said
in an editorial. "But even to say that the elections moved a little
closer to European standards would be a mockery of those standards."
At a May 14 press conference, civil society leaders echoed that
frustration. "If this is an international standard, we can honestly
say we don't need these international standards," commented Boris
Navashardian, president of the Yerevan Press Club. "The election is
not election day only," added Larisa Minasyan, executive director of
the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation - Armenia. "We're
talking about the whole process." [Both the Open Society Institute
Assistance Foundation - Armenia and EurasiaNet.org operate under the
auspices of the Open Society Institute].
Virtually all major opposition parties and media critical of the
government claim that the outcome of the poll was essentially decided
by massive vote buying by the RPA and Prosperous Armenia. Throughout
voting day there were numerous reports of busloads of presumably
bribed voters transported to polling stations in Yerevan and other
parts of the country. Boris Frlec, head of the ODIHR mission, said
his observers also witnessed the busing.
"Our observers have reported a number of cases where vote buying
on election day could be indicated, but very difficult to prove,"
Frlec told journalists on May 13. "There were groups of people who
were waiting in lines, there were groups of people seen with some
money and so on. But we could include in our report only things that
were seen and actually proven."
In the months preceding the vote, the Armenian press had reported on
the widespread collection of voters' passport data by local government
officials and RPA and Prosperous Armenia activists.
Representatives of the two parties also reportedly visited or
telephoned households across the country to ascertain for whom they
planned to vote. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Some opposition leaders now say that was aimed at clarifying the names
of hundreds of thousands of Armenians who live and work abroad but
remain listed in voter registries. They allege that the authorities
handed out a comparable number of fake passports to bribed voters
who also cast ballots in place of the absent citizens.
"We have grounds to assert that there were mobile voting groups
of people, and each member of those groups had about 10 passports
bearing their pictures but [printed with] the names of other people,"
Nikol Pashinian, a leader of the radical Impeachment bloc, charged
at a May 13 opposition rally in Yerevan.
In response, the police promptly laughed off the allegations,
questioning the opposition member's sanity. Pashinian has, in turn,
called for a selective verification of official documents which voters
had to sign before casting ballots.
Editor's Note: Emil Danielyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and
political analyst. Elizabeth Owen, EurasiaNet's Caucasus news editor,
contributed reporting to this article.