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Armenia: Planned Presidential Election Exit Poll Creates Controversy

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  • Armenia: Planned Presidential Election Exit Poll Creates Controversy

    ARMENIA: PLANNED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION EXIT POLL CREATES CONTROVERSY
    Emil Danielyan

    Eurasianet
    Jan 7 2008
    New York

    The United States has offered to organize and finance a first-ever
    exit poll in Armenia as part of an effort to promote a free-and-fair
    presidential election on February 19. The initiative has been
    endorsed by the election favorite, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian,
    while causing serious misgivings among his main challengers.

    The main source of opposition candidates' concern is the apparent
    willingness of US officials to rely on an Armenian polling organization
    with reputed close ties to the Armenian government. Its pre-election
    opinion polls have long been criticized as misleading by Armenian
    opposition and civic groups.

    Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, most elections in Armenia have
    been marred by serious instances of fraud, and strongly criticized
    by Western observers. Western monitors deemed the most recent,
    parliamentary elections, held in May 2007, to be more democratic
    than the previous ones, although the divided Armenian opposition
    again alleged widespread irregularities. [For background see the
    EurasiaNet special feature Armenia: Vote 2007]. The United States
    and the European Union have since been pressing the administration
    of outgoing President Robert Kocharian to make sure that the February
    19 presidential vote marks an improvement over the parliamentary polls.

    Preparations for the presidential ballot were high on the agenda of
    a December 4 meeting between Sarkisian and Joseph Pennington, the
    US charge d'affaires in Yerevan. A government statement quoted the
    Armenian premier as welcoming the proposed exit poll. "We were very
    pleased at the prime minister's very positive response, and we hope to
    be able to do this," Pennington told reporters on December 17. He said
    the exit poll would "enhance the credibility" of official vote results.

    The remarks came amid a growing debate over the credibility of
    an ongoing series of opinion polls financed by the US Agency for
    International Development and commissioned by the Washington-based
    International Republican Institute (IRI). Although the polls
    are nominally conducted by a Lithuanian affiliate of the Gallup
    Organization, it is the controversial Armenian Sociological Association
    (ASA) that has done the crucial fieldwork of interviewing citizens and
    submitting the resulting data to the US pollster. The purpose of the
    "Armenia National Study" project launched by the USAID two years ago
    is to gauge public opinion on a wide range of issues facing Armenia,
    including the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and relations
    with Turkey.

    Respondents have also been asked to rate the country's main political
    parties and presidential candidates. The IRI has chosen not to
    publicize the results of these queries, notifying instead each of
    those parties and candidates only of their own approval ratings. Most
    of them have made available their respective figures to the media,
    with Prime Minister Sarkisian appearing to be by far the most popular
    of the presidential hopefuls. According to the most recent survey,
    Sarkisian is on target to garner about 30 percent of the vote.

    Opposition leader and former parliamentary speaker Artur Baghdasarian
    would finish a distant second with 12 percent.

    Another opposition candidate, former President Levon Ter-Petrosian,
    was attracting just 2 percent support in the most recent poll, despite
    being viewed by many local commentators as Sarkisian's most formidable
    challenger. Betraying concern about the former president's political
    appeal, incumbent authorities have cracked down on Ter-Petrosian
    allies and vilified him in government-controlled media outlets in
    recent months. Yet, if one is to believe the Gallup/ASA pollsters,
    Ter-Petrosian has become even more unpopular with Armenians since
    holding the biggest opposition rallies in Yerevan in years in October
    and November. "This is too ridiculous to be true," said Aleksandr
    Arzumanian, a Ter-Petrosian campaign coordinator.

    The credibility of the polls has also been questioned by Baghdasarian
    and Vahan Hovannisian, the presidential candidate of the Armenian
    Revolutionary Federation (ARF), a junior partner in the Sarkisian-led
    governing coalition. Like Ter-Petrosian and his aides, they have
    stressed the fact that the polls are being conducted by the ASA,
    whose chairman, Gevorg Poghosian, is known to have close ties to the
    government. They allege that Poghosian is manipulating polling data
    on government orders to legitimize possible vote rigging.

    Sarkisian laughed off such allegations as "fairy tales" on December
    26. The US Embassy in Armenia likewise defended the polls on December
    28, saying that they use a "methodology that is the mainstay of
    reputable Western polling organizations." Embassy representatives
    also played down the ASA's role in the process. "It is common practice
    to work with local organizations in carrying out such public opinion
    polls," the embassy said in a statement.

    The statement made it clear that the Vilnius-based Baltic Surveys
    Ltd./Gallup Organization will also be entrusted with holding the
    planned exit poll on election day, suggesting that the ASA will be
    closely involved in its conduct. According to aides to Ter-Petrosian,
    Hovannisian and Baghdasarian interviewed by EurasiaNet, ASA's
    participation would be enough to make the poll untrustworthy for
    Sarkisian's three main challengers.

    "We don't trust the Armenian Sociological Association and believe
    that it works on government orders," claimed Arzumanian. "If Serzh
    Sarkisian issues a relevant order, the results of the exit poll will
    be the same as the ones the authorities will try to get by fraudulent
    means on election day."

    "It would be right if the Americans conducted the poll by themselves,
    rather than through the ASA or other local organizations whose
    objectivity and professionalism is well known to us," said Spartak
    Seyranian, a spokesman for the ARF.

    "Exit polls will be worth it only if they don't involve any Armenian
    organization," agreed Heghine Bisharian, Baghdasarian's campaign
    manager. "We can't regard them as trustworthy if they are conducted
    in the same format [as the ongoing opinion polls]."

    A spokesman for Sarkisian's Republican Party of Armenia scoffed
    at these statements. "They know very well that Serzh Sarkisian's
    rating is much higher than theirs," Eduard Sharmazanov told
    EurasiaNet. "And I don't think that the Americans would entrust this
    job to non-professionals."

    Editor's Note: Emil Danielyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and
    political analyst.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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