Overview of the Armenian Local Elections Held on October 24, 1999

On October 24, 1999, Armenians went to polls for the second elections of local government bodies since the Declaration of Independence in September 1991. At stake were the posts of Chief Administrator and seats in the Council of Elders (local legislatures) in more than 1,100 cities, villages, and the 12 Districts of the capital Yerevan.

Each of the local administrative units is defined as a Community (Hamaynk) by the Armenian Constitution. The Community is governed by a Chief Administrator (who has the title of Mayor in cities) and a Council of Elders (Avakani).

The current local government came into existence as a result of local elections held on November 11, 1996. In the over 200 communities whose chief executives had resigned or had been dismissed by the central government, voters chose only members of local legislatures on October 24. The new heads of those 200 plus communities had been chosen in pre-term elections held at various times.

As of this writing, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) did not have precise data as to how many parties and candidates had taken part in the election.

The overwhelming majority of partisan candidates -- some 500 -- represented the Republican Party of Armenia led by then Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisian and its junior partner in the ruling Unity Bloc, the People's Party of Armenia. The latter fielded a total of 264 candidates.

Other parties represented in the Armenian National Assembly -- National Democratic Union, Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), Rule of Law Country, Right and Accord Bloc and Communist Party of Armenia -- showed little interest in the polls, citing lack of motivation and financial resources. Each of these parties fielded or endorsed only a few dozen candidates. The majority of candidates had no party affiliation.

In about 200 rural communities, elections for Councils of Elders seats were cancelled because of a paucity of candidates.

The community heads were elected on the first-past-the-post basis, with the candidate gathering the plurality of votes being declared winner. Members of the Councils of Elders were chosen in multi-mandate electoral districts. Under the Armenian Electoral Code, the five candidates polling the highest number of votes in districts win seats in the Council. Depending on the size of the population, a community may have 5 to 15 council members elected from one to three multi-mandate districts.

The deadline for the registration of candidates was October 4, 1999. Registration required a formal application, a money deposit, and a declaration of income. In communities with more than 5,000 voters, those candidates seeking executive and legislative posts were required to deposit $1000 and $200 respectively. In smaller communities, registration as a candidate required $500 and $100 respectively. Candidates who polled more than five percent of the vote got their money back. There was no requirement that candidates collect signatures from citizens.

The registration process was marred by a dispute between the CEC and an author of the Electoral Code, Victor Dallakian, regarding candidate eligibility. The Code stipulates that only those citizens who have resided in the community for at least one year prior to polling can run for seats in its government bodies. Another clause states that the provision is to become effective as of April 1, 2000. The CEC ruled that it was applicable to the October 24 vote. However, courts throughout Armenia backed Dallakian's reading of the law, reinstating dozens of rejected candidates.

On October 11, the Armenian National Assembly effectively barred army conscripts from voting in the local elections, ostensibly in an effort to remove a major source of past irregularities. A week later, President Robert Kocharian signed a decree postponing elections in 69 mostly rural communities where refugees from Azerbaijan (who do not have Armenian citizenship) make up the majority of the population. The move followed a ruling by the Constitutional Court stating that non-citizens of Armenia can participate in local but not general elections. (The Court’s decision resulted in the National Assembly’s October 16 decision to remove legal provisions that bar refugees from participating in general elections.)

The CEC, 11 Provincial Electoral Commissions (PEC), and Precinct Electoral Commissions (PrEC) are formed on a largely partisan basis, and each has 13 permanent members responsible for local and general elections. Three members of the commissions are appointed by the central government. Five seats are reserved for those parties that collected the highest number of signatures in the run-up to the May 1999 parliamentary elections. These parties are the Unity Bloc, Dashnaktsutyun, Rule of Law Country, Democratic Fatherland, and Powerful Fatherland. The remaining five seats are controlled by parties that had factions in the previous National Assembly.

The election campaign began on October 5 and ended at midnight on October 22. Unlike the National Assembly and Presidential elections, candidates were not entitled to free air time on state television and in other mass media. State-owned Armenian National Television and leading privately owned television channels broadcast mainly the paid campaign ads of several candidates running in five Yerevan districts.

The Electoral Code allows candidates to accept campaign donations that are contributed to a special bank account. Any campaign expenditure from beyond this "pre-election fund" is deemed illegal. The limit on donations is set at $250 for individuals and $1,500 for legal entities. Those banks in which campaign accounts are opened can not accept donations beyond these ceilings.

Voting on election day began at 8:00 a.m. and ended at 8:00 p.m. Voters were handed two separate ballots, one listing candidates for the post of Community Chief and the other for seats in the Council of Elders. It was possible to vote against all candidates.

Voting proceeded without major incident or serious protests from political parties. Inaccuracies in voter lists, which nearly derailed the May parliamentary elections, were again a major problem, albeit to a lesser extent. Once again, thousands of people across the country could not find their names on voter registration lists and some of these people were allowed to vote by the courts upon petition. Police presence in and around Yerevan's polling stations was enhanced as the authorities sought to stave off the violence that had disrupted a by-election in the city's Ajapnyak District in July.

The elections were characterized by widespread voter apathy and cynicism as evidenced by a record-low nationwide turnout of 25 percent. Yerevan residents were the most passive, with only 20 percent of eligible voters in the capital going to polls on October 24, according to CEC figures. The highest turnout, 60 percent, was registered in the southern Vayots Dzor province.

The official procedure for counting and tabulating votes was the same as in the May parliamentary elections. The precinct protocols summarizing the result of the counting of ballots are submitted by the PrECs to PECs no later than 12 hours after the polls close. The PECs total the ballots for all precincts in their jurisdiction and then forward the protocols summarizing the results to the CEC no later than 22 hours after the receipt of precinct results. Based on the counts of the elections received from the PECs, the CEC is to announce the preliminary results of the elections no later than 28 hours after the completion of voting. The final results of the elections are to be announced by the CEC no later than 72 hours after the completion of voting and within five days if an electoral case goes to court.

This time frame appears to have been observed by election officials. Even so, the CEC did not have complete vote results from urban, let alone rural, communities three weeks after voting. Nor did the CEC have a vote tally for political parties.

For this report, therefore, the full picture in all major towns and cities had to be established with the help of several of PECs themselves. In addition, each of the leading parties and blocs provided figures about their own performance in the polls, and this report had to rely on such data because of the lack of CEC information.

As was widely predicted, the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) emerged as the winner of the local elections, capitalizing on the weakness of its political opponents. No other party won control over a town or city in Armenia. Candidates affiliated with or endorsed by the RPA won top executive posts in about 340 communities, according to figures provided by the party. Some 420 members and allies of the RPA became members of local councils.

But the RPA suffered a major setback in Yerevan's Gentron (Center) district when it failed to unseat the incumbent Community Chief representing the Armenian National Movement (ANM) -- former President Levon Ter-Petrossian’s party. Also, the incumbent Republican Mayor of Gyumri, Armenia’s second-largest city, was defeated by an independent candidate.

The former ruling party lost its race in the northern town of Artik. The ANM, which has only one deputy in the current National Assembly, fielded no candidates in other municipalities.

The RPA's junior partner in the ruling Unity Bloc, the People's Party of Armenia (PPA), won only one head of an urban community. A PPA candidate beat his rivals in Yerevan's Arabkir district. (Voting for the Council of Elders in one of Arabkir's multi-mandate constituencies was annulled by the CEC and re-run on November 7.) The PPA won control over 30 rural communities and secured a total of 68 local legislative seats.

It is important to note that the Unity Bloc, which controls the Armenian National Assembly and much of the ROA government, did not run with one single list of candidates. In some areas, the RPA and PPA even competed against each other.

The opposition National Democratic Union (NDU) claimed that its candidates had won in eight rural communities. The NDU secured a total of 45 seats in Councils of Elders throughout the country.

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, Dashnaktsutyun) did not have figures regarding its nationwide performance in the elections as of late November. The NDU and other opposition parties boycotted the previous local elections held in November 1996. The ARF was banned at the time and backed the boycott.

The Communist Party of Armenia (CPA) said it had won six legislative seats in Yerevan districts. Party officials, including the Communist Party deputy chairman of the CEC, had no information about the CPA's performance in other parts of Armenia as of late November.

The recently formed Rule of Law Country (RLC) party, which reportedly has government connections, claimed victory in six villages and said six other candidates had been elected to local councils.

Another group represented in the National Assembly, the opposition Right and Accord Bloc, did not have complete figures regarding its performance. One of the parties forming the Bloc, the Union for Constitutional Rights, said it had won control over two villages and seven council seats.

The opposition Democratic Fatherland, which split from Ter-Petrossian's ANM in 1997 and has no deputies in the current National Assembly, said seven of its candidates had become village chiefs and that they had won 18 local council seats. The party had won control over Yerevan’s Ajapnyak district in a July by-election.

Political organizations other than the Unity Bloc attributed their passivity to the perceived lack of powers enjoyed by local governments. Elected community heads, for instance, can be dismissed by the central government practically at will. They also admitted their inability to get the majority of the electorate to polling stations on election day. Not surprisingly, Unity Bloc candidates were mostly challenged by individuals with no political affiliation, many of them businessmen.

The Electoral Code adopted in February 1999 allows local NGOs focusing on democracy and human rights to monitor elections at all levels of government. Local observers were on hand in many polling stations on October 24. Also present was a monitoring mission from the Council of Europe. The 12-person delegation of the Council of Europe's Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLRAE) described the elections as "free and fair" in a statement issued on October 26. The multinational mission, which visited about 90 polling stations across the country, noted a "significant improvement in managing the electoral process" despite "several minor irregularities" that primarily concerned errors in voter lists.

Disputes between the electoral commissions and the Armenian courts continued after the announcement of vote results. The CEC wrote to the ROA Presidential Justice Council on November 19 protesting against what it saw as illegal court verdicts concerning vote results in several communities. The rulings handed down by courts in various parts of the country either invalidated vote results or overruled decisions by the PECs that had annulled elections while ordering new elections.

In the most vivid example, on October 28 the PEC in a Kotayk province scrapped the elections for Mayor of the city of Abovian on the grounds that irregularities registered during the ballot had affected its outcome. But a local court of first instance overruled the decision in what amounted to declaring one of the candidates Mayor of Abovian. Under Armenian law, election rulings can not be appealed to higher courts.

Table 1 displays the results of the elections in five Yerevan districts and 25 towns and cities in Armenia where voters chose district heads and mayors. The data was provided by the Central Electoral Commission and some of the Provincial Electoral Commissions

 

 

Researched and written by Emil Danielyan, Senior Researcher, and Dr. Lucig H. Danielian, Associate Director, the Center for Policy Analysis at the American University of Armenia

 

November 1999

 

 

Table 1: Selected Results of the October 16, 1999, Local Elections

in the Republic of Armenia

 

 

 

Researched and prepared by the Center for Policy Analysis at the American University of Armenia