Eurasia Insight:
WEST UNLIKELY TO SANCTION ARMENIA FOLLOWING ANOTHER TROUBLED VOTE
Emil Danielyan: 12/12/05

The United States and the European Union have criticized Armenian authorities’ handling of a recent constitutional referendum but they seem reluctant to impose sanctions on Yerevan over the irregularities. At the same time, Washington and Brussels are withholding support for the Armenian opposition’s renewed attempts to organize mass protests.

According to the Central Election Commission, nearly two-thirds of Armenia’s 2.3 million eligible voters took part in the November 27 referendum, and over 93 percent of them endorsed constitutional amendments drafted by President Robert Kocharian. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The reported turnout, extremely high by Armenian standards, sharply contrasted with images of deserted polling stations across the country on election day. The Armenian opposition, which called for a popular boycott of the vote, claims that the real turnout was below 16 percent.

Opposition allegations of massive vote-rigging were given weight by observers from the Council of Europe. The 14-member observer mission cast doubt on the credibility of the official vote results, saying that “the extremely low voting activity did not correspond to the high figures provided by the electoral commissions.” Armenia’s largest election monitoring organization, called It’s Your Choice, issued an even more critical report that cited numerous instances of ballot-box stuffing and other serious irregularities.

The Strasbourg-based leadership of the Council of Europe, a driving force behind Kocharian’s constitutional reform, has yet to react to the findings of its observers. The EU, by contrast, has expressed concern about the reported fraud. “A failure to prevent activities such as this calls into question Armenia's commitment to transparency and democracy," the British embassy in Yerevan said in a December 2 statement issued on behalf of the EU.

US reaction was more cautious, with the State Department voicing “regret” at the reported irregularities. In a separate interview, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza pointedly declined to question the Kocharian administration’s democratic credentials. “It’s too early to judge whether or not democracy [in Armenia] has moved forward,” he said.

Bryza also said it is “premature” to speculate on whether or not the referendum controversy bodes ill for the freedom and fairness of the next Armenian parliamentary and presidential elections due in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Washington puts those polls at the center of its efforts to promote political reform in the South Caucasus nation.

The Europeans follow a similar line, stressing the importance of the constitutional changes that purport to limit sweeping powers enjoyed by the Armenian president. The EU’s executive body, the European Commission, will hold its annual meetings in Brussels on December 13 with the foreign ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The talks are expected to focus on the three countries’ participation in the European Neighborhood Policy, which entitles them to a privileged relationship with the EU. There are no indications that the Armenian referendum or last month’s reputedly fraudulent parliamentary election in Azerbaijan will hamper the development of the EU’s ties with Yerevan and Baku.

The West’s sole referendum-related demand is for Kocharian’s administration to investigate the fraud reports and to punish delinquent election officials. Armenian authorities have faced such calls in the past but have not prosecuted anyone for electoral crimes. There is a widely held belief in Armenia that vote rigging orders come from the highest echelons of government. “The authorities need such officials [rigging elections] … so that they can do the same in 2007 and 2008,” the Yerevan daily Aravot editorialized on December 9. “If there is even a single precedent of a punished election rigger, the entire system will show serious cracks.”

Opposition leaders say the disputed referendum demonstrated that Kocharian’s administration will never hold a clean election and risk losing power. A coalition of about two dozen Armenian opposition parties has tried to topple Kocharian with a series of rallies held in Yerevan over the past two weeks. But the effort has all but fizzled out due to poor attendance. The opposition’s previous campaign last year also ended in failure for similar reasons. In both cases the opposition failed to attract any support from the United States and Europe.

The situation is similar in neighboring Azerbaijan, where opposition forces have accused the US administration of turning a blind eye on electoral fraud for the sake of geopolitical interests. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Although the Armenian opposition has so far avoided openly voicing such accusations, its frustration with Washington and Brussels is evident. One of its leaders, Vazgen Manukian, claimed on December 8 that Kocharian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev have secured tacit Western support with a “false” pledge to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict soon. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Another prominent opposition figure, Victor Dallakian, also cited Karabakh as a key factor, but from a different angle. “An attempt is being made to weaken the two presidents and force these individuals lacking legitimacy to sign appropriate [peace] agreements,” he said.

Aliyev and Kocharian are expected hold a face-to-face meeting in January that could yield a long-awaited breakthrough in the protracted Karabakh peace process. “We believe that the parties are now poised to make the transition from negotiation to decision and that there are serious benefits within reach for all,” the foreign ministers of the OSCE member states said in an unusually upbeat statement adopted during their meeting in Ljubljana last week. Speaking to reporters in the Slovenian capital, US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said 2006 “can be the year when Armenia and Azerbaijan may take major steps towards a strong and just peace.”

Bryza insisted that the possibility of a Karabakh settlement, a key US goal in the region, “does not weaken our resolve to promote democracy because we believe that we can not have long-term security or stable situation in the Caucasus if democratic reform isn’t moving forward.”

It has hardly moved forward in Armenia or Azerbaijan over the past month. In fact, many commentators believe that the Armenian referendum marked a new low in the country’s troubled electoral history. “November 2005 has proved to be a bad month for democracy in the south Caucasus,” Sabine Freizer, a Caucasus analyst at the International Crisis Group, wrote in a comment posted on OpenDemocracy.net. The West, she said, has “lost significant popular standing [in Armenia] by sponsoring a series of constitutional amendments, yet not seriously monitoring the attempt to ratify them.”