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Armenia: Little Hope Of More Democracy

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  • Armenia: Little Hope Of More Democracy

    ARMENIA: LITTLE HOPE OF MORE DEMOCRACY
    By Vahan Dilanyan

    Institute for War and Peace Reporting IWPR
    March 28, 2011
    UK

    Sense of being surrounded by threats impedes creation of fairer
    society.

    Although there is still more than a year to go until the next
    parliamentary election, opposition parties in Armenia are already
    calling their followers onto the streets.

    There is plenty of popular dissatisfaction with the status quo,
    driven by rising prices and widespread poverty. But experts say the
    scope for channelling that into real change is limited by Armenia's
    difficult relationships abroad, which its current leaders can always
    cite as justification for tough controls at home.

    Armenia is still officially at war with Azerbaijan, and its troops
    garrison the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorny Karabakh, so ruling
    politicians can play the national security card if their authority is
    threatened. This has allowed them to fend off demands for democratic
    reforms.

    The government's authoritarian tendencies, and its insistence on
    supporting Karabakh, has won support from big businesses keen to keep
    their monopolies safe from the Azerbaijani and Turkish competitors
    who might flood in if a peace deal was signed.

    Opposition parties seeking to harness popular resentment of the
    government believe there is a limit to what people will put up with
    in the name of national security.

    "One fine day, a people who have nothing to lose and who have been
    driven to extreme suffering, might cease to care about the views of
    opinion of parliament, and even about Karabakh," Armenian National
    Congress, ANC, leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan told a rally of supporters
    last month.

    Experts say, however, that most people are not prepared to abandon
    their fellow-Armenians in Karabakh, and fear a possible repeat of
    the conflict with Azerbaijan. This plays into the government's hands.

    "It's clear the Armenian public has a keen sense of the danger of new
    war with Azerbaijan. That means that both the public and the opposition
    are more restrained than they might be], and that citizens have to
    opt for political stability over democratisation in many areas," Garik
    Keryan, head of politics in Yerevan State University's international
    relations faculty, said.

    Commentators say the government tolerates political freedoms as long
    as they do not interfere with its grip on power, while the opposition
    movement remains divided among competing personalities. People who
    attend opposition protests are often there because they are against
    the government rather than actively drawn to the opposition.

    Ter-Petrosyan's ANC fails to make much ground because he alienated
    many people in his time as Armenian president in the 1990s.

    "Look what this government has driven me to. I have a law degree and
    I'm driving a taxi. They're forcing people to team up with Levon,"
    Artur, a 29-year-old Yerevan resident said. "I remember the days of
    Levon's government - it was terrible then. But what else can you do?

    These politicians are just humiliating us."

    Ter-Petrosyan has ruled out a swift attempt to win power, comparing
    his political strategy to a game of chess. That has led many analysts
    to argue that he is not interested in changing the political set-up
    radically, just in putting himself and his followers at the head of it.

    Political battles in Armenia are often more about competing individuals
    than different ideologies.

    "The ANC probably a few tens of thousands of supporters, and the
    Heritage party has fewer, since it isn't as well-organised," public
    relations expert Samvel Martirosyan said. "Heritage more closely
    resembles a collection of individuals."

    The divisions among opposition groups were graphically evident on
    March 17, when Ter-Petrosyan was taking part in a protest meeting
    in central Yerevan and went past Heritage leader Raffi Hovhannisyan
    without acknowledging the fact that the latter had been staging a
    hunger strike for the past two days.

    Arman Vardanyan, chairman of the Union of Young Politicians of Armenia,
    said recent remarks made by Ter-Petrosyan, 66, might indicate he was
    considering stepping down as ANC leader. But finding a replacement
    of similar standing would be difficult.

    "Ter-Petrosyan was making it plain he didn't intend to stand in the
    next [2013] presidential election. But in my opinion, no newcomer
    is going to be able to present a serious challenge to the current
    president, Serzh Sargsyan," Vardanyan said.

    He predicted that the ANC would win around 25 per cent of the seats
    in parliament in the May 2012 election, while the Heritage Party and
    Dashnakutsyun, a party now in opposition but formerly part of the
    ruling coalition, would probably struggle to surpass the five per
    cent threshold needed to gain any seats at all.

    The result, Vardanyan said, would be that the ruling coalition would
    maintain its grip on power, and there would be little progress towards
    a more democratic system.

    Keryan ascribes Armenia's failure to build a more open political
    system in the two decades since independence to economic problems,
    the Karabakh war and its legacy of isolation in the region, and the
    continuing influence of Russia.

    "For 20 years, Armenia has seen its security as depending on its
    strategic partnership with Russia," he said. "This could change only
    if there were major geopolitical changes in the region, and those
    changes haven't happened."

    Last year, the two countries agreed to extend the stay of Russian
    troops in Armenia. An official strategy paper on national security
    reaffirms that a continued Russian presence in the South Caucasus
    is crucial for Armenia. While the document also talks about greater
    cooperation with NATO members, most analysts say the authorities
    would never stray too far from Moscow.

    Meanwhile, a rapprochement with Turkey which has emerged over recent
    years appears to have ground to a halt.

    With no change to the external environment, observers say there is
    little impetus to move away from the current system dominated by a
    small political elite and by oligarchs with vested economic interests.

    "There is a privileged caste which is not only able to bypass the law
    but which uses the state to pursue its own ends," Arman Rustamyan,
    a member of parliament from the opposition Dashnakutsyun party, said.

    Hovsep Khurshudyan, an expert from the Armenian Centre for National
    and International Studies, said that despite the government's declared
    intention of pursuing reforms, "the economy remains in the hands of
    a few families which also have political influence".

    "The government is unable to force the big oligarchs to pay taxes, so
    it's forced to place the whole tax burden on small and medium-sized
    businesses and on ordinary citizens, who will soon refuse to put up
    with this, or will emigrate," Khurshudyan added.

    Vazgen Manoukyan, who heads of the Public Council, a government
    advisory body set up by President Sargsyan in 2009, told IWPR that
    while Armenia had a democratic constitution, there were problems in
    practice with elections, freedom of speech and the judicial system.

    "The parliamentary and presidential elections of 1990 and 1991 were
    democratic, but 1995 and 1996 saw a huge step backwards, and the
    tradition of electoral fraud has continued since then, albeit with
    some modification," he said.

    Manoukyan said free speech was marred by the removal of the A1+ TV
    channel from the airwaves some years ago, the judicial system was
    far from perfect, and economic domination by the oligarchs had curbed
    both market competition and the growth of democratic institutions.

    Vahan Dilanyan is a freelance reporter in Armenia.




    From: A. Papazian
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