THE SUCCESSOR: SARGSYAN TAKEOVER FACES EXTRAORDINARY CONDITIONS. WILL KOCHARYAN PLAY A ROLE?

April 9 – the day when Serzh Sargsyan is due to be inaugurated as President of Armenia – will signify a new development in the history of post-Soviet Armenia as for the first time the incumbent will pass over the reins of powers to his chosen successor. While the event itself was perfectly predictable for quite some time and even looked as a formality to many, its significance will surely have a different tint in view of the developments that Armenia has seen in the last six months and which at one point nearly plunged the country into an abyss of civil insurgency.
Robert Kocharyan, who was often described by many an analyst as a lame duck president -- not only due to the approaching end of his second and last (consecutive) term in office but primarily because of his dwindling political clout – dramatically restored his former political influence and strength in the run-up to the hotly contested presidential election of February 2008 and especially in the post-election period by throwing a lifeline to his successor as a tough-talking Commander-in-Chief.
On Election Day, February 19, Kocharyan may have dropped a hint at his upcoming premiership as he answered a question of a Russian TV correspondent in Armenia about his political future. “It is the greatest secret in Armenia today,” he said then jokingly.
Then the day before security forces dispersed the protest of the disgruntled supporters of defeated candidate Levon Ter-Petrosyan in Opera Square and then clashed with demonstrators in bloody battles into the night, retiring President Kocharyan appeared to have removed a little the shroud of secrecy over his plans for the near future as he was answering questions from State University students.
In a joking manner and even making an effort to fight his laughter, he then referred to his conversation with Russia’s outgoing President Vladimir Putin at a recent informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose organization embracing a dozen of former Soviet republics. During that private talk, as Kocharyan said, they joked a little about each other’s political future. The Armenian president, in particular, told students that it may happen that after he leaves his current job one day he will feel like missing it, or, on the contrary, may regret having deprived himself of the “joys of life” for long ten years.
The next day’s events, however, showed that Kocharyan is unlikely to remain sidelined and looks to be a plausible PM to say the least.
The situation in Armenia’s politics may resemble the “smooth” transition of power from National Hero Putin to President-elect Dmitry Medvedev, but, nonetheless, it contains essential differences.
While Putin handpicked Medvedev from a bunch of likely successors, Kocharyan was effectively deprived of that choice due to the growing influence of powerful defense minister and later Prime Minister Sargsyan. Unlike Putin, Kocharyan was challenged to assert his right to “appoint” his successor during the last two years of his presidency.
(While answering questions taken from the public on Thursday, President-elect Sargsyan denied he and Kocharyan had a job swap scenario like in Russia. “Both I and Kocharyan are honest enough that had there been such a scenario we would have said about it before the election, like it was declared by Putin and Medvedev,” Sargsyan said. But, at the same time, he said he was considering several candidates for the post and did not have a decision yet. While many analysts picked that as a sign that Kocharyan will not get the job, what Sargsyan in fact may have said was simply denying the existence of such a scenario from the outset, which, though, does not make it impossible in the future).
Sargsyan’s presidency in 2008 appeared a foregone conclusion ever since the longtime minister and Kocharyan’s close associate effectively took over the leadership in Armenia’s majority Republican Party in summer 2006 and then in the capacity of its full leader (after the death of then Republican Party head and PM Andranik Margaryan in March 2007) led it to a landslide victory in the legislative polls of May 2007.
Crushing the opposition that failed to win any significant presence in the country’s legislature then, Sargsyan also appeared to have outdone Kocharyan as the Prosperous Armenia party – intended by the president as his main political support base in parliament and possibly a springboard for future premiership – finished only a distant second. Few then had doubts about Sargsyan’s easy shot at presidency some months later.
While the Republican majority in parliament allowed Sargsyan to single-handedly appoint his Cabinet then, he preferred a coalition with the second largest faction in parliament and a cooperation deal with the third faction of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. And even though the latter then declared it would seek to field its own candidate for the 2008 presidential race, it didn’t seem to bother much the omnipotent Prime Minister with strong presidential ambitions.
But what seemed to be Sargsyan’s cruising to an easy victory in February 2008 was given a shake as former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan came back from a ten-year political obscurity to enter the fray last fall.
And despite assurances from Sargsyan’s political party that their candidate would win by all accounts and that the first president’s popularity was too low to pose any serious threat, his campaign clearly needed something extra to curb Ter-Petrosyan’s mounting challenge.
And in effect, Ter-Petrosyan’s bid to stop what he himself repeatedly called as “reproduction of power”, opened a space for maneuvering for Kocharyan, who was clearly trying to avoid the fate of becoming Armenia’s “youngest pensioner”. It was not without reason that Kocharyan on several occasions made rancorously critical statements of Ter-Petrosyan’s campaign and angrily retaliated to the latter’s grave accusations.
While it would look more natural if the retiring president would just shrug off the criticism and let his successor take the blow, Kocharyan at times was noticeably a more active campaigner than Sargsyan himself.
And the last steps in his capacity as president to quell riots by imposing a state of emergency and introducing troops into Yerevan is likely to be perceived as a big favor by the president-elect still for many years to come.
As the post-election tensions appear to be turning into lengthy legal proceedings, questions remain as to how the new administration will deal with the presence of quite a sizable segment of the population for whom the government’s outspoken critic Ter-Petrosyan personified change and an even larger part of society that has lost trust in democratic processes.
In any case, the new president and his administration, which most likely will engage the experience of Armenia’s yet longest serving president and may also use the services of a broader spectrum of political forces, will have to work with a parliament that only partly reflects the real balance of political forces in the country, leaving out a big chunk of the protest electorate, and a Cabinet which if not by name but at least functionally is unlikely to undergo essential changes.
Whether or not the personnel changes in government, if any, will bring long-expected improvements in Armenian society is not clear yet.
But at least one thing is clear at this point:
Restoring voter/public trust inside the country and credibility at international organizations undermined to a certain degree by the recent stormy developments is likely to feature prominently on the agenda of the new administration for the years to come.
Suren Musayelyan

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