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The 2012 Armenian Parliamentary Elections: Implications for Armenian Foreign Policy

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The 2012 Armenian Parliamentary Elections: Implications for Armenian Foreign Policy Istituto Affari Internazionali IAI WORKING PAPERS 12 | 14 – May 2012 The 2012 Armenian Parliamentary Elections: Implications for Armenian Foreign Policy Marilisa Lorusso Abstract Armenian parliamentary elections were held on 6 May 2012. Five parties and a coalition won seats in Parliament. Three of them are opposition parties, two in the previous legislature were allies of the presidency party, the Republican Party. The latter comfortably won the elections. With 45% votes through the proportional system and 29 seats through the majoritarian one, the Republican Party has the absolute majority of seats, 69 out of 131. So the two main issues in Armenian foreign policy - the protracted conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh and relations with Turkey - will be addressed in continuity with the policy expressed so far by President Serzh Sargsyan, unless the regional counterparts change their strategies. With the party he chairs being confirmed as the leading political force of the country, Sargsyan will run for his second term in the upcoming presidential elections. Keywords : Armenia, Parliamentary elections, Armenian foreign policy, Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian-Turkish protocols, Ceasefire violations © 2012 IAI IAI Working Papers 1214 The 2012 Armenian Parliamentary Elections: Implications for Armenian Foreign Policy The 2012 Armenian Parliamentary Elections: Implications for Armenian Foreign Policy by Marilisa Lorusso ∗ 1. The 2012 Armenian parliamentary elections: an overview May 6 th was election day in Armenia. Five years have passed since the 2007 parliamentary elections, which paved the way for then Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan to run for the Presidency in 2008. This year the same process could be repeated, whereby after the election, incumbent President Sargsyan may announce officially his candidature for the 2013 presidential elections. In 2007 a coalition between the Republican Party (RP), Prosperous Armenia (PA), and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) won an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly. 1 The only other parties which entered parliament were the Country of Law (8 seats) and the Heritage Party (7 seats). After the elections, Country of Law joined the government, leaving Heritage as the only opposition party. The winning coalition, however, did not survive the entire legislature: the ARF withdrew from the government on 27 April 2009, to protest against the Turkish-Armenian Protocols. ARF Chairman Hrant Markarian blamed President Sargsyan for surrendering to Ankara’s claims, thus undermining Armenia’s national interests. 2 The electoral framework has not changed since the last elections. Armenia has a unicameral parliament with 131 seats. The electoral system is mixed; 90 members are elected through a proportional party-list system, while the remaining 41 members are elected through a majority system in single-member constituencies. On 22 March the Armenian Central Electoral Commission closed the procedures for nominations. 3 All the parties sitting in parliament ran for elections, although not all of them presented candidacies for all constituencies. Politically, however, a novelty was the emergence of a new political actor which challenged other contesters in all constituencies: the Armenian National Congress (ANC) led by former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan. 4 For the 90 party-list seats, nine political forces presented their candidates: 8 parties plus Paper prepared for the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), May 2012. ∗ Marilisa Lorusso is Associate Research Fellow at the Istituto per gli studi di politica internazionale (ISPI) and collaborator of the Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso . 1 Hereinafter the parliament. 2 David L. Phillips, Diplomatic History: the Turkey-Armenia Protocols , New York, Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights, March 2012, p. 60, http://hrcolumbia.org/peacebuilding/diplomatic_history.pdf. 3 “ Политическая ‘ девятка ’ вступает в борьбу за армянский парламент ”, in Новости -Армения , 22 March 2012, http://www.newsarmenia.ru/politics/20120322/42631152.html. 4 “ За 41 место в парламенте Армении по одномандатным округам будут бороться человек 180”, in Новости -Армения , 22 March 2012, http://www.newsarmenia.ru/politics/20120322/42631146.html. © Istituto Affari Internazionali 2 IAI Working Papers 1214 The 2012 Armenian Parliamentary Elections: Implications for Armenian Foreign Policy one alliance - the ANC. 5 The ANC is a new political force, although its leadership is far from new to the political life of the country. Levon Ter-Petrosyan was the first Armenian President who served for almost two mandates until 1998, when he resigned under pressure from his Cabinet, which refused to accept a peace plan for Nagorno- Karabakh put forward by the international mediation forum: the Minsk Group. Then President Ter-Petrosyan advocated the plan as a viable compromise, but failed to convince his Prime Minister, Robert Kocharyan, a Karabakhi, who won early presidential elections and replaced him as a President, between 1998 and 2008. Levon Ter-Petrosyan made a come-back in 2008, as a candidate in the presidential elections, which he lost against another Karabakhi, the current incumbent President Serzh Sargsyan. At today’s political juncture, Ter-Petrosyan managed to rally around his leadership some opposition parties, including the People Party of Armenia led by Stepan Demirchyan, the Armenian Republic Party led by Aram Sargsyan, the Social Democrat Party, and other minor parties. Apart from the ANC, all Armenian parties made the strategic choice to run alone, albeit the Heritage Party joined its list with the Free Democrats for the proportional system, aiming to retain and possibly to increase its current seats, so as to play a more punchy role. Raffi Hovannisyan, leader of the party, was aware that it was highly unlikely that the parliamentary balance would drastically change with the elections, but he hoped - and most analysts shared this opinion - that the next legislature would see more room for opposition. 6 The 2012-2017 Parliament is indeed more inclusive. Six parties received more than 5% vote, thus passing the electoral threshold: the Heritage Party, the Armenian National Congress, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Prosperous Armenia, Country of Law and, with an absolute majority of votes, the presidential party: the Republican Party. While the first three represent the opposition, relations between two former allies, Prosperous Armenia and the Republican Party, are quite tense. 7 This leaves Country of Law as the only clear supporter of the Republican Party. The election campaign started on 8 April. Well before its start, it was already clear that the most prominent national political forces would be confirmed. During the campaign some topics were hotly debated, especially at the domestic level: the role of powerful oligarchs in parliament and the legitimacy of the elections. At the regional level the big 5 Full list, from the official webpage of the Armenian Central Election Commission: Prosperous Armenia, Heritage Party, Armenian National Congress, Armenian Revolution Federation, Democratic Party of Armenia, Communist Party of Armenia, Republican Party of Armenia, United Armenians Party, Country of Law. Proportional lists available at http://www.elections.am/kus2012 (this website is bilingual, Armenian and English). 6 Author’s interview with Raffi Hovannisyan, Yerevan, July 2011. Hovannisyan was the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Armenian Republic. He descends from the American Armenian diaspora and moved to Armenia after independence. Although he is linked to the US, he has gained some respect among the Russian Armenian diaspora as well. In 2011 Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigorij Karazin held a meeting with him in Yerevan. See Author’s blog, Wisdom or mourning , 27 March 2011, http://marilisalorusso.blogspot.it/2011/03/week-21-27-march-wisdom-or-mourning.html. 7 For the new political dynamics within the former ruling coalition, see the video of the interview to Civilitas Foundation Director Salpi Ghazarian and Regional Studies Center Director Richard Giragosian, Election analysis - old and new alliances , 6 May 2012, http://civilnet.am/2012/05/06/election-analysis-old-and-new- alliances. © Istituto Affari Internazionali 3 IAI Working Papers 1214 The 2012 Armenian Parliamentary Elections: Implications for Armenian Foreign Policy questions were, are and will be, relations with Turkey and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The aim of this paper is that of mapping the Armenian political debate in light of the 2012 elections, highlighting the possible trajectories that post-election Armenian might take in regard to the latter two issues. 1.1. Corruption, conflict of interests and legitimacy: a ruling élite in search of stability At the annual congress of the Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, President Sargsyan stressed that business must be consistently separated from the state, 8 touching on a sore point in the domestic political economy of the country: the “dollarization” of Armenian politics. In fact, a clique of oligarchs retains considerable economic and political power and common wisdom is that parliament has been turned into an arena where their interests are negotiated. According to the Corruption Perception Index 2011 of Transparency International, Armenia is ranked 129 th out of 182 considered states, where New Zealand is at the top and Somalia at the bottom. 9 The corruption of public officials was again addressed
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