Armenians like to consider themselves important. It’s not uncommon to hear people remark that everyone considers themselves to be a king or general, or deserving of consideration or privileges over and above the law. This is especially true at times of elections when candidates from obscure or insignificant groups appear out of nowhere, fail to get anyway and then declare that their votes were stolen.

However, this latest story from RFE/RL eclipses that. Israel Hakobkokhian, a former boxing champion, wants to run for president. There’s just one problem, though, he can’t afford to do so and has appealed to the president to intervene so that he can run even though few other than his relatives, friends or neighbours are likely to vote for him.

The Visa and Passport Department has provided Israel Hakobkokhian, 47, with evidence of his 10-year citizenship and permanent residence in Armenia required under Armenian law for a person to stand for president. However, also according to the law, the nonpartisan former boxer’s documents cannot be accepted by the Central Election Commission until he pays a sum of 8 million drams (about $26,500) as an election bond.

Hakobkokhian, who had successfully represented the Soviet Union in amateur boxing competitions throughout the 1980s, said potential buyers of his medals from world and European championships are interested only in their gold content. Now he plans to pawn his entire collection of medals “on bearable terms”.

Meeting with journalists on Thursday, Hakobkokhian read out his appeal to President Robert Kocharian, standing.

“Dear King of All Armenians Robert Kocharian. Please, assist me in pawning all my medals that I earned with my blood and sweat at the Central Bank, or any other bank,” he declared pompously. “Your assistance will be to ensure terms on which other states extend loans to our country.”

[…]

Last May Hakobkokhian stood as an independent candidate in a Yerevan single-member constituency. Finishing a distant third in the race, Hakobkokhian refused to concede his defeat and went on a hunger strike, which he ended only after being visited by Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.

Various news sources report that more candidates have come forward to contest the 19 February presidential election in Armenia. Others have been rejected or have seemingly come out of nowhere, but the main news is that veteran opposition politician Vazgen Manukian’s nomination has been put forward by his National Democratic Union party. RFE/RL reports that Manukian took the opportunity to again attack both the current and previous president.

Widely considered to have actually won the 1996 election that saw Levon Ter Petrosian secure a second term in office, Manukian said that there is no difference between the two regimes which have controlled Armenia since Independence was declared in 1991. Indeed, RFE/RL quotes him as saying, the system of corruption and falsified elections is the same.

Speaking at the congress of his National-Democratic Union (AZhM), Manukian urged both political forces and the public “to rally around ideas rather than personalities”, which he said is the only guarantee of success.

[…]

“1998 was conditioned by 1996, the October 27 [parliamentary killings] are conditioned by 1998, the banners at the 2007 election,” Manukian charged.

He went on to say that despite the “power change” made in 1997, the system remained the same.

“Electoral mechanisms in Armenia do not work and the power is still concentrated in the hands of a small number of people,” Armenia’s ex-premier said.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.

ARF-D Polling Booth, Arabkir District, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

As mentioned yesterday, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D), one of two minor parties in a tripartite coalition governmen, is currently holding a nationwide vote on which of two senior party figures will be nominated as their candidate for next year’s presidential election in Armenia. Ironically, however, as RFE/RL reported last week, the vote is non-binding.

Spartak Seyranian, a senior party spokesman, told RFE/RL that voters across Armenia will be offered to go to polls from next Saturday through Wednesday to choose between Armen Rustamian and Vahan Hovannisian, two of the top Dashnaktsutyun leaders.

The two men, who hold senior positions in parliament, were shortlisted as potential presidential candidates during a party congress last September. The pro-establishment party is scheduled to hold another congress on November 30 to nominate one of them for the Armenian presidency by secret ballot.

Seyranian made it clear that Dashnaktsutyun delegates will not be bound by the outcome of the plebiscite, the first of its kind to be ever held in Armenia. “Naturally, it will have no legal force,” he said. “But it will be important for the party to present its candidates and to ascertain the public’s attitude to towards them.”

According to Seyranian, polling stations for the consultative vote will be located in special tents to be pitched in Yerevan and other parts of the country. There will be at least ten such tents in the Armenian capital, he said.

The full post accompanied by photographs is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.

Following on from problems sending emails because ArmenTel is on an international blacklist for spam, it now seems as though I can’t access or update my main Oneworld Multimedia site or the Armenia Election Monitor 2008 blog. Instead, I have to use any other internet provider other than ArmenTel. For now, I’m not sure why I can access other sites inside and outside Armenia, but not my own. Whereas before I couldn’t send emails via an ArmenTel connection, I now also can’t receive them.

Anyway, this blog is thankfully not affected, but if anyone has any ideas as to why this situation has arisen please leave a comment. I’d also like to hear from other ArmenTel ISP users if the same is true for them. The URLS I can’t access are the following:

http://www.oneworld.am
http://blog.oneworld.am

ARF-D Polling Booth, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

As the presidential election scheduled for 19 February 2008 draws ever closer, the political temperature in the Republic continues to rise. At stake is the issue of succession to the incumbent president, Robert Kocharian, who under the Armenian Constitution can not run for a third consecutive term in office. Yet, although many election observers focus on the unfolding battle between the prime minister, Serzh Sarkisian, and former president, Levon Ter Petrosian, there are other candidates who will soon be known.

One of them will be nominated by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) who have opened up their own “polling stations” around the country apparently to not only select their candidate from two nominees, but also to gauge popular support for the party. I ran into one of those booths near the Komitas marker earlier today and snapped it with my mobile phone (photo above). RFE/RL also says the party is confident of victory.

A top leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) claimed on Monday that the February 19 presidential election will be won by his party’s candidate, rather than Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian. Hrant Markarian, the de facto head of Dashnaktsutyun’s worldwide Bureau, also sounded upbeat about the vote’s freedom and fairness.

“Serzh will not be elected, and there will be no fraud,” Markarian told RFE/RL. He said he is confident that his party, which is represented in Sarkisian’s cabinet by three ministers, will emerge victorious from the contest.

Markarian predicted that the Dashnaktsutyun candidate, who will be nominated later this week, will at least reach the second round of voting which he said will be necessary for determining Armenia’s next president.

Local commentators agree that a run-off vote is a real possibility. But many of them believe that it would most probably pit Sarkisian against his most bitter opposition foe, former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, rather than the Dashnaktsutyun hopeful.

Like other Dashnaktsutyun leaders, Markarian refused to speculate on whether the nationalist party, which has long been at loggerheads with Ter-Petrosian, would endorse Sarkisian in that case. “I don’t want to comment on that variant because I am sure we will go into the second round,” he said. “I don’t know if we will face Serzh or Levon but am sure we will reach the second round.”

[…]

Dashnaktsutyun, meanwhile, continued on Monday its improvised national vote aimed gauging popular support for its two potential presidential candidates, Vahan Hovannisian and Armen Rustamian. The party opened at the weekend makeshift polling stations in Yerevan and the rest of the country, urging Armenians to cast ballots for one of the two men. The vote, the first of its kind ever organized in Armenia, will end on Thursday, the day before Dashnaktsutyun’s pre-election congress.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.

With less than three months before next year’s presidential election, a campaign site for Levon Ter Petrosian has been set up under a number of domains. Nazarian lists them here while Artmika at Unzipped offers his thoughts on the first election site by a candidate to emerge so far.

News on its launch came via Aramazd. All previous attempts failed to deliver proper content. This one seems like a decent website. It contains biography, current news and archive material, including photos and speeches by Ter-Petrosyan dating back to 1988-1990. Site is predominantly in Armenian. According to Aramazd, English version will be available soon. There is also interactive content there - blog, comments, but these are in their early stages. I assume site will develop further to become fully functional, with more contents added.

[…]

Interesting to note, that Ter-Petrosyan programme section is still “under construction” and divided into 5 headings: Karabakh issue; combating corruption; economic reforms; foreign relations; and army reform. I assume these will be the main issues which Levon will address during his upcoming speeches.

It comes as no surprise, but RFE/RL reports that Armenia’s first foreign minister, U.S. born Heritage party leader Raffi Hovannisian, is unlikely to have his candidacy for the presidential election accepted. The news came from a top aide to the Armenian president, Robert Kocharian.

Hovannisian’s Zharangutyun (Heritage) Party renewed the demand in an appeal to Kocharian on Wednesday. It argued that Hovannisian had served as independent Armenia’s first foreign minister and is now one of the country’s most popular political figures. Some local commentators speculated that the authorities might allow him to run this time around in order to further split the opposition vote and weaken their most uncompromising challenger, former President Levon Ter-Petrosian.

But according to Stepan Safarian, a senior Zharangutyun parliamentarian, the influential chief of Kocharian’s staff, Armen Gevorgian, reaffirmed the Armenian president’s position on the issue on Friday in an “extensive letter” to the party. “The letter said that the current president’s 2001 decree can not be revised,” Safarian told RFE/RL.

Safarian said that although the opposition party believes that Kocharian’s refusal is illegal and unsubstantiated, it is unlikely to challenge the move in court. “I don’t think we will go to court, even though that issue has not been discussed,” he said, arguing that Armenian judges rarely rule against the executive authority.

Hovannisian had already unsuccessfully challenged the presidential administration in local courts ahead of the last presidential election held in 2003. He has not yet indicated whether he will endorse another opposition candidate or urge his supporters to boycott the 2008 election if he is again barred from the presidential race.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election 2008.

Ortachiya, Aragatsotn Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2006

As mentioned earlier, Geographical will be publishing an article and photos by yours truly on Yezidis in Armenia, the division within the community regarding Kurdish identity, and the work of academics researching the largest minority in the country in their January 2008 issue.

The physical version of the magazine is apparently going to the printers tomorrow. Until the article and photos are out or up online, some previous articles on the Yezidis in Armenia are at the following URLs:

http://www.oneworld.am/journalism/articles/yezidi.html
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=f&o=325045&apc_state=henh

As always, my interviews on Yezidis in Armenia since 1998 are at:

http://www.groong.com/orig/yezidi.html

And there’s lots of coverage on this blog too:

http://oneworld.blogsome.com/category/yezidis/

Although the media here refused to cover this story when given the chance to some months ago, blogs were responsible for exposing allegations of corruption in World Bank projects in Armenia long before others did. In particular, allegations of corruption were first documented by British whistleblower Bruce Tasker on his own blog, Blowing the World Bank Whistle, and then here on Oneworld Multimedia.

Tasker set up his blog when news outlets here refused to cover the story at the beginning of the year although the former finally did so only after this blog brought the alleged scandal to greater public attention. Eventually, some media outlets here did follow suit, but many publications here and abroad were hesitant in taking material from yours truly when I approached them. Nobody wanted to get on the bad side of the World Bank.

However, New Internationalist published my short piece on Tasker and his battle with the World Bank at the end of October. Now, RFE/RL reports that the scandal has hit the big time in Yerevan. However, the World Bank continue to deny any wrongdoing. Time will tell.

A U.S. anti-corruption watchdog joined on Thursday a British whistleblower in accusing the World Bank of covering up what they see as gross misuse of a $30 million loan that was meant to upgrade Armenia’s battered water infrastructure.

The loan was part of a 1999 World Bank project designed to quickly improve supplies of drinking water in Yerevan. The Armenian parliament formed in 2003 an ad hoc commission to investigate the effectiveness of these and other large-scale infrastructure projects financed by Western donors.

In its first report made public in March 2004, the commission headed by deputy speaker Vahan Hovannisian concluded that the water scheme has failed to achieve its main objectives due to mismanagement and corruption among government officials and private firms. The report also deplored the fact that 27 percent of the World Bank funds have been spent on project management, overheads and logistics.

The World Bank dismissed the claims at the time, insisting that the project’s implementation has been a success. Earlier this year it was again put on the defensive by Bruce Tasker, a Yerevan-based British engineer who had participated in the 2003-2004 parliamentary inquiry as an expert. Tasker detailed those allegations on his website and effectively implicated the World Bank in the alleged corruption.

The allegations were picked up by the Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington-based group that specializes in whistleblower protection and scrutinizes World Bank projects around the world. It urged the bank’s Institutional Integrity Department (INT) to launch an official investigation.

The GAP’s international director, Beatrice Edwards, said on Thursday that she and Tasker spent the past two days meeting with U.S. and British diplomats and the head of the World Bank’s Yerevan office, Aristomene Varoudakis. She said the latter again denied any wrongdoing on the part of his lending institution.

“Mr. Tasker produced two documents that show quite clearly that there was corruption and fraud in the municipal development project, and we were told that these documents signified nothing of importance,” Edwards told a news conference in Yerevan.

“Mr. Vardoulakis told us to go to the Department of Institutional Integrity where we have already been,” she said, adding that the department has told the GAP that the fraud case is a “medium priority” for it. This means that the case will not be investigated by the INT anytime soon, she said.

[…]

Tasker claims that the installation of water meters was a major source of corruption among Armenian and foreign officials as well as private firms involved in the project’s implementation. He says local contractors alone were able to pocket up to $10 profit on the sale of each meter by charging customers for installation.

Veolia Eau, the French utility giant running the Yerevan network, now says that it will need a decade to ensure 24-hour water to the vast majority of local households. The operator argues that as much as 80 percent of drinking waters leaks out of eroding pipes before reaching consumers. The World Bank funds were supposed to significantly reduce the huge losses.

Anyway, all my posts on this alleged corruption scandal are here, while Bruce Tasker’s blog is here.

RFE/RL reports that the U.S. born former foreign minister Heritage party leader, Raffi Hovannisian, is once again attempting to put forward his candidacy for the presidential election in Armenia early next year. However, as was the case in 2003, problems linger with his citizenship. Under the constitution, presidential candidates must be citizens of the Republic of Armenia for at least 10 years. Hovannisian was only granted his in 2001.

Hovannisian had been controversially barred by from contesting the previous presidential election on the grounds that he had not been an Armenian citizen for the previous ten years, something which is required by the country’s constitution. […]

Kocharian rejected at the time Hovannisian’s demand that his citizenship be backdated to 1991. The U.S.-born politician claimed that his repeated citizenship applications had been illegally ignored by Kocharian and his predecessor Levon Ter-Petrosian.

In a written appeal to Kocharian, Hovannisian’s Zharangutyun (Heritage) party stopped short of explicitly accusing the Armenian president of breaking the law, only urging him to “restore justice.” It also argued that Hovannisian had served as independent Armenia’s first foreign minister and is now one of the country’s most popular political figures.

“Based on the above-mentioned [arguments,] the Zharangutyun Party’s board expects him [Kocharian] to immediately reconsider and satisfy the public demand to grant Raffi K. Hovannisian citizenship effective from the declaration of the Republic,” the statement said.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.

Levon Ter Petrosian, Opposition Rally, Liberty Square, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

With the race to win the presidential election in Armenia scheduled now heating up, RFE/RL reports that four main opposition party leaders remain reluctant to support the bid by former president, Levon Ter Petrosian, to succeed the incumbent, Robert Kocharian. Significantly, their support might prove crucial in determining the outcome of the 19 February vote.

A senior member of the Orinats Yerkir Party, one of the two opposition groups represented in the National Assembly, told RFE/RL that its governing board will meet on Thursday to discuss Ter-Petrosian’s proposal. The Orinats Yerkir leader, former parliament speaker Artur Baghdasarian, has long been harboring presidential ambitions and has until now ruled out the possibility of his withdrawal from the race in favor of another opposition contender.

A spokesman for the other opposition parliamentary party, Zharangutyun, said it can not respond to the offer because its U.S.-born leader Raffi Hovannisian is not in Armenia at the moment. Hovannisian and his allies insist that he is eligible to run for president despite not having been an Armenian citizen for the past ten years, something which is required by the country’s constitution. They say his repeated citizenship applications had been illegally ignored by Ter-Petrosian and the current President Robert Kocharian.

Artashes Geghamian, who was also a key opposition contender of the 2003 presidential ballot, responded coolly to Ter-Petrosian’s call, welcoming only the ex-president’s readiness to serve as a “tool” for regime change. “In that sense I find positive Levon Ter-Petrosian’s offer and readiness to serve the opposition,” he said. “As to how we will make use of that readiness, that will be discussed at a meeting of our party’s presidium.”

Vazgen Manukian, another opposition heavyweight who had been Ter-Petrosian’s main challenger in the troubled presidential election of September 1996, was even more dismissive of his erstwhile foe. “Candidates always make such offers. The trouble is that there is an element of blackmail in that offer,” he said.

Manukian also made it clear that he does not consider Ter-Petrosian an “alternative” to Kocharian or Sarkisian. He has repeatedly stated that he will contest the presidential election in any case.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.