Istanbul to Beijing
Yesterday I discovered that freelance writer Joshua Kucera was in town and that in addition to writing a series of articles en route from Istanbul to Beijing via the countries that made up the former Soviet Union in the Caucasus and Central Asia for EurasiaNet, he’s also running his own blog detailing his travels. This is particularly interesting as he’s able to comment on the aftermath of the 12 May parliamentary election here.
[…] this election got a fairly good review from international monitors. The EU said the elections were “on the whole, conducted fairly, freely and largely in accordance with the international commitments which Armenia had entered into.” And they kept the ruling party in power.
The reactions to the election I’ve heard basically come in two forms, and depend on whether the person is from the Armenian diaspora or was born here. The former say “Well, it wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty good. And hey, even elections in the US aren’t perfect.” The latter say “They’re just getting better and more subtle at stealing the elections.” The theory seems to be that the ruling party paid off local leaders to get people in their towns and villages to vote for the ruling party. But there is no evidence for this. As one guy told me, “it’s so blatant it’s not provable.” Caucasian logic, I guess. The diaspora people say the locals are conspiracy theorists, the local people say the diaspora people are naïve. I suspect both are right.
Anyway, today was a big opposition protest – big by Armenian standards, at least. I would estimate the crowd at about 2,000, the more enthusiastic opposition types I went to it with said 5-6,000. Even assuming the bigger figure, and taking into account that Armenia has only 3 million people, that’s not going to start a revolution. A similar protest last week got violently broken up by the police with beatings and tear gas, but this one went peacefully.
The big problem with the opposition here is that it’s not well organized. (Probably they need American help, like in Georgia and Serbia.) There are some small attempts to organize around those models. Apparently there was some discussion about choosing a color or some sort of flora to symbolize opposition to the government, like orange in Ukraine, roses in Georgia or tulips in Kyrgyzstan. The closest they came here was apricot, as this is apricot country and it’s sort of a national symbol. But instead they chose “1+,” as in one vote plus one vote plus one vote… adds up to a victory. Not bad, but not quite as simple as a color or fruit.
Still, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of energy at the protest, and there were probably more people sitting in the cafes surrounding the square where it started than actually protesting. […]
The people I was with were of mixed opinion about the impact of the protest: some thought it was the start of something that could snowball; some thought it was doomed to failure. One guy said the west sealed the opposition’s fate when it said the election was basically fair, pointing out that in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, a key ingredient was the sense that the west was on the side of the opposition. Without that, I think he’s right, there’s not much hope for them.
Having come straight from Georgia, it’s also interesting to read what Josh has to say about Armenia in comparison with our northern neighbor. This is especially interesting for me given that since the 2003 Rose Revolution things are noticeably improving there. Indeed, in many cases it seems to me that Armenia is slipping behind Georgia in areas where it always used to be ahead. Roads, for example, or economic activity that does actually trickle down. Josh has his own opinion.
First impressions of Armenia: it’s really beautiful, especially in the north, where there are really impressive mountains and the road followed a rushing river for much of the way. Armenia is also visibly much poorer than Georgia; I barely saw anything – building, car, road – that wasn’t falling apart until I got to Yerevan. It’s quite a bit more industrial, too, than Georgia, I saw lots of big factories, which I’m guessing were mining-related as they were in the mountains.
As for Yerevan, it has a bad rap that it is a soulless Soviet city, and I can’t say I’ve seen much to say differently. But it’s pleasant enough – lots of people out on the street (the weather is great), tons of outdoor cafes, and so on. There are many more signs in Russian than there were in Georgia, which is helpful. Both Georgian and Armenian have their own alphabets, and both are incomprehensible to a new visitor. With Russian I at least have a hope. […]
Anyway, I met up with Josh yesterday at Liberty Square and we later went off to catch Bambir performing at Yerevan’s Stop Club. Great time, and it will be interesting to read what Josh writes during his stay in Armenia. You can catch that and much more on Josh’s blog at http://www.joshuakucera.net/.
Incidentally, continuing the issue of the opposition failing to win the hearts and support of most of the population during the parliamentary election which I last blogged about most recently here, E-Channel has more on how the previous opposition failed to endear themselves to the international community.
And it’s true, while civil society and various opposition parties were at each other’s throats — and many NGOs in receipt of international donor money for assisting in establishing democratic elections here refused to work with or cover parties such as Orinats Yerkir because of partisan interests in the “radical opposition” — they also perpetually change their geopolitical alignment whenever it suits them.
It’s really hard to take them seriously as a result, and I hope these major failings are now addressed and we see the formation of a genuine opposition based on proven ideological positions and issues. For now at least, it appears as though Orinats Yerkir and Heritage are unlikely to do anything other than that. Let’s see, or else we’ll see the same situation as on 12 May repeat itself in later elections.
Yes, it does appear that many voters were bribed even though nobody can prove it, but those that might have been went to the polls gladly. Moreover, by taking any bribes and voting for governmental parties in a mostly secret ballot kind of indicates that those same voters wouldn’t have voted for the opposition anyway.
Indeed, with the amount of cynicism and apathy prevalent towards politics in Armenia, it’s unlikely they would have voted at all. If this is the case, this is my main problem with vote buying in addition to the fact that it’s illegal. That is, the artificial domination of Parliament by one party adversely affects the rights of those that chose to vote for other parties without inducement.
Like I said, this issue now needs to be investigated and steps taken to prevent it from happening again in the future.
Comment by Onnik — May 20, 2007 @ 4:48 pm
Comment by Onnik — May 21, 2007 @ 3:28 am