Published since 07.2002
Published on May 15, 2009
WHO IS WHO: MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS SET STAGE FOR ANOTHER ‘BATTLE’ OF CURRENT AND FORMER ELITES
- Municipal assembly elections in Yerevan scheduled for May 31 will give the capital city an elected mayor for the first time in nearly two decades. The city has had nine president-appointed mayors since Armenia gained independence in 1991. All of them were to a certain extent ‘people’ of the incumbent head of state. Hambartsum Galstyan, Vahagn Khachatryan, Ashot Mirzoyan and Vano Siradeghyan acted on the mandate of the first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Suren Abrahamyan, Albert Bazeyan, Robert Nazaryan and Yervand Zakharyan were in charge of the “Yerevan policies” of the second president, Robert Kocharyan. Gagik Beglaryan, who was appointed in 2009, is the top executive of city-related ‘directives’ given by the third head of state, Serzh Sargsyan. Under the legislation, the president was entitled to dismiss the mayor from the post. The situation required a change after Armenia joined the Council of Europe in 2001 and assumed the obligation to make the mayoral post in the capital an elected position. In line with the constitutional amendments passed in a referendum in 2005 and the new Law “On Local Government in Yerevan”, a 65-seat municipal assembly elected under a proportional system by popular vote will choose a new mayor. The top candidate on the slate of the party that gets an absolute majority of seats in the elected body automatically becomes mayor. Six political parties, namely Prosperous Armenia, the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), Orinats Yerkir, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, Dashnaktsutyun), the People’s Party, the Labor Socialist Party of Armenia, and one election bloc – the Armenian National Congress (ANC), are contesting the seats in the assembly. A majority of analysts, though, tend to view it as a ‘two-horse’ race -- between the opposition ANC and the governing RPA. ARMENIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS The core of this political bloc – the Armenian National Movement (ANM) party, was “born” in 1989 on the basis of the Karabakh committee – a group of intellectuals recognized by many Armenians as their de facto leaders who sought the unification of the Armenian-populated oblast of Nagorno-Karabakh (then part of Soviet Azerbaijan) with mainland Armenia. It is this party that held political power in the republic from September 1991 to February 1998. Correspondingly, it also governed the city of Yerevan. The top three candidates on the ANC slate for the May 31 elections are ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, leader of the People’s Party of Armenia Stepan Demirchyan and coordinator of the opposition bloc Levon Zurabyan. Among the supporters of the ANC are Suren Abrahamyan, who headed the city in 1998-1999, during the period of the first term of President Robert Kocharyan in office. In June 1999, Abrahamyan was appointed Interior Minister. Several months later, though, he was dismissed from the ministerial post after the shootout in the Armenian parliament on October 27, 1999. Later, Abrahamyan joined Ter-Petrosyan. The first two candidates on the ANC list also ran for president – Demirchyan in 2003 and Ter-Petrosyan in 2008. The current 167-man ticket of the bloc does not include candidates from the opposition Heritage party with which the ANC had conducted negotiations for a possible joint participation in the elections. Heritage eventually refused to take part in the elections. REPUBLICAN PARTY OF ARMENIA The RPA is participating with the most extensive election list of candidates including 180 names. The top three candidates are incumbent mayor of Yerevan Gagik Beglaryan, prefect of the capital’s northwestern district of Avan Taron Margaryan (the son of the late prime minister Andranik Margaryan) and Hrach Poghosyan, who heads an engineering design organization. The RPA was founded in 1966 and for 25 years was an underground organization in the territory of the Soviet Union. The party stood for Armenia’s independence. It was officially registered in 1991. It was during that year that the party’s leader at the time, Ashot Navasardyan, unsuccessfully ran for the post of Armenia’s first president. Leading RPA members were in the forefront of the defenses during the 1991-1994 Karabakh war. After the war, the party joined the then ruling ANM and participated with a joint bloc in the 1995 parliamentary vote. The elections then were accompanied with large-scale violence and were held in a general atmosphere of fear, which adversely effected the images of both parties. The two parties also fielded a single candidate in the 1996 presidential race. That vote entailed the first mass post-election disturbances in the territory of independent Armenia in which firearms, water cannons and explosives were used. A state of siege was declared in Yerevan. Ashot Mirzoyan was the then head of the city. But in fact powerful Defense Minister Vazgen Sargsyan and feared Minister of the Interior Vano Siradaghyan were in charge of the situation. Today’s president Serzh Sargsyan was then Minister of National Security. Strongman Vazgen Sargsyan became the leader of the RPA in 1998. The first president of Armenia had already resigned over ‘his position of concessions’ in the Karabakh issue. The RPA was split after the October 27, 1999 terrorist act in parliament in which the then prime minister Vazgen Sargsyan was assassinated along with seven other top statesmen and politicians. Seven months after the terrorist act, some of the ‘Republicans’ led by the brother of the assassinated prime minister turned away from the authorities and formed a party with a very similar name – Republic. And in the course of time they rejoined the ANM camp that had lost many of its members by then. Among the ‘returnees’ was also Albert Bazeyan, who was in charge of Yerevan affairs as mayor in 1999-2001. This circumstance became the main reason for Bazeyan’s resignation from the post. Another part of the RPA retained the name and rallied around nonpartisan president Robert Kocharyan. Their leader Andranik Margaryan was appointed Prime Minister in 2000. In 2003, then Defense Minister Serzh Sargsyan, not a member of the RPA, topped the party’s slate and led it in that year’s parliamentary elections. After those elections the party has in fact governed the city solo – through its members Yervand Zakharyan (2003-2009) and Gagik Beglaryan, who succeeded the former earlier this year. The ANM and the RPA are the two most radical groups on the Armenian political landscape with a once “shared shadow sector of the economy.” This antagonism, which can also be called “elections of Yerevan’s mayor”, is nothing more than the division of an old pie. The ANM had been more powerful before, the RPA is more powerful now. Among other parties contesting the election are pro-establishment Prosperous Armenia and Orinats Yerkir, both junior partners in the RPA-led governing coalition. If voted into the municipal assembly without enough mandates to name their own candidates for mayor, they are most likely to give preference to the RPA candidate for the post. Top candidates of these two parties’ lists -- Health Minister Harutyun Kushkyan (Prosperous Armenia) and MP Yeghine Bisharyan (Orinats Yerkir) -- practically have no chance for becoming mayor. These parties are political projects that had once been designed “to steal the votes”. One of them, Orinats Yerkir, was born in 1998, the second – in 2004. One of the oldest Armenian parties, ARF Dashnaktsutyun, stands out in this lineup. This traditional party already governed the country in 1918-1920 when Armenia briefly became independent before being divided between Bolshevik Russia and Kemalist Turkey. Dashnaktsutyun also governed Yerevan during its rule in the short-lived first republic. Remarkably, the party had invited to the capital great architect Alexander Tamanyan, who designed the city’s master plan in 1919. The party took an active part in the Karabakh war. After the end of hostilities in 1994, the nationalist party was outlawed – not in Azerbaijan though, but in Armenia. But today, MP Artsvik Minasyan stands little chance, if at all, to become mayor, since Dashnaktsutyun, which had been incorporated into different-level government structures since 2000, has lost a large part of its potential electorate. The party is well aware of this and its participation in the elections is the first step on the way of gaining a new place on the political space of Armenia after a recent exit from the governing coalition. And this is its motivation. Thus, each of the five organizations (four parties and one bloc) have their own motivation for participation in the elections. The People’s Party (led by media holding president Tigran Karapetyan) and the Labor Socialist Party of Armenia (led by Movses Shahverdyan) might have as well skipped the elections as they represent nothing more than décor for the stage of Armenian internal political life.
- Aris Ghazinyan
Headlines for May 15, 2009
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Official Yerevan has responded to the recent statements made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who again linked Armenian-Turkish normalization with Armenian concessions to Azerbaijan over ...WHO IS WHO: MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS SET STAGE FOR ANOTHER ‘BATTLE’ OF CURRENT AND FORMER ELITES
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Today in Armenian history- 1827 Harootyoon Alamdaryan exhorts the soldiers before their departure for the front.
- 1913 Death of Qaseem, author of moralistic, populist novels and editor of the "Soorhandak" and "Manzoomee Efkeestee" papers.
- 1916 Death of freedom-fighter and hero Qerree.
- 1918 The Turkish army re-occupies Alexandropol (Gyoomree).
- 1920 Death of actor Ovee Sevoomyan.
- 1930 Death of the humanist Dr. Friedhof Nansen. His internationally recognized "Nansen Passport" saved the lives of many stateless refugees.
- 1946 Death of Grigor Avetyan (actor) in Yerevan. He was born in 1870.
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