Countries at the Crossroads 2006

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Country Report - Armenia

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Accountability and Public Voice – 3.51

"Power in the Republic of Armenia belongs to the people," reads Article 2 of the nation's post-Soviet constitution, adopted in 1995. It provides for free and fair elections at all levels. However, all national elections held in Armenia since independence have been marred by some degree of ballot stuffing, vote rigging, and similar irregularities. Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as well as the Council of Europe reported serious fraud during the most recent Armenian presidential and parliamentary elections, held in 2003. They concluded that the elections fell short of Western standards, giving weight to opposition claims that they were blatantly rigged.

The disputed constitutional referendum held on November 27, 2005, underscored the country's culture of electoral fraud. A monitoring team from the Council of Europe cast serious doubt on the credibility of the official results, according to which nearly two-thirds of Armenia's 2.3 million eligible voters took part in the referendum, and over 93 percent of them backed President Kocharian's constitutional changes. "The extremely low voting activity did not correspond to the high figures provided by the electoral commissions," the observers said in a statement.¹  The Armenian opposition, which boycotted the vote, put the turnout at about 16 percent.

The disputed referendum reinforced the widely held belief that Armenians cannot change their leadership through elections. The nation's sole post-Soviet regime change, in February 1998, was the result of government infighting rather than the expression of popular will. Free and fair elections have proved elusive despite frequent changes to electoral legislation that are supposed to inhibit chronic vote rigging. But the legal amendments have been rendered meaningless by the Armenian leaders' evident reluctance to let the public decide whether or not they should remain in power. Furthermore, the amendments have not weakened the regime's tight grip on the election commissions. The legally guaranteed equal campaigning opportunities exist only on paper, with state television and the private networks controlled by Kocharian routinely providing extremely biased coverage of opposition activities. Campaigning for the referendum was no exception.

The ruling regime has also relied heavily on its status and extensive financial resources, which are often used to buy votes, a phenomenon that again came to light during nationwide local elections held over the course of 2005. The local polls, boycotted by the opposition, were won mostly by wealthy candidates representing various business clans and even quasi-criminal elements loyal to the regime. The latter increasingly relies on government-connected oligarchs.

The authorities' poor human rights record deteriorated further in the spring of 2004, when the Armenian opposition launched a campaign of antigovernment protests in a bid to replicate the November 2003 Rose Revolution in neighboring Georgia. Kocharian's regime responded with an unprecedented crackdown on opposition supporters across the country. Hundreds were arrested and sentenced to up to 15 days in prison on trumped-up petty charges under the Soviet-era code of administrative offenses. Very few of them had access to lawyers or a public trial.

Police also arrested several opposition leaders in April 2004 and charged them with calling for a "violent overthrow of the government." The authorities released the leaders three months later under pressure from the Council of Europe. Around that time, two other prominent opposition figures and a human rights activist were assaulted in Yerevan. The assailants were never brought to justice. The victims described them as burly men with very short haircuts, resembling in their appearance bodyguards for government-connected oligarchs. Two dozen such men attempted to disrupt an opposition rally in Yerevan on April 5, 2004. Scores of police stood by and looked on as they smashed the cameras of photojournalists who were filming their actions. Only two of the thugs were subsequently prosecuted and given symbolic fines.

Tension came to a head on the night of April 12-13, 2004, when security forces dispersed an opposition demonstration outside Kocharian's residence, using water cannons, stun grenades, and even electric-shock equipment. They went on to ransack the Yerevan offices of the main opposition parties. Facing criticism by various domestic and international organizations, the authorities argued that heavy-handed tactics were justified because they staved off a coup d'etat.²
Armenia's democratization has also been hampered by an extremely lopsided system of governance that gives sweeping powers to the president of the republic. The constitutional amendments, approved in the referendum and adopted, gave some of those powers to the cabinet of ministers and parliament. The president, for example, will no longer be able to sack the prime minister and dissolve the National Assembly at will. His authority to appoint and dismiss virtually all judges will also be somewhat restricted. The United States, the European Union, and the Council of Europe endorsed those amendments. But the Armenian opposition dismissed them as insignificant and said the authorities should respect the existing laws in the first place.

Despite the constitutional reform, the Armenian president will remain by far the most powerful state official. In particular, he will continue to form single-handedly the State Civil Service Council that oversees the government bureaucracy. This council was set up in 2002 in accordance with a new law intended to protect civil servants against arbitrary dismissal, cleanse government agencies of incompetent officials, and create a merit-based system. The council, according to its chairman, Manvel Badalian, fired about 350 civil servants and hired more than 1,350 others on a competitive basis by November 2004.³  But critics say that the selection process, which includes an oral interview, is discretionary and open to abuse.

Armenia boasts more than 3,000 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) registered with the Ministry of Justice. Although most of them hardly operate in practice, the figure suggests that the registration process is rather simple. The NGOs engage in a wide range of activities, including benevolence, human rights protection, women's and minority affairs, and consumer rights. The most successful usually have external sources of funding. The government rarely interferes with their activities, but the impact of NGOs on government policies and decisions has been minimal.

Local civic groups rarely dealt with political affairs until the 2004 government crackdown on the opposition, which was trying to unseat Kocharian. From April through June 2004, some groups held rallies and picketed the prosecutor general's office in Yerevan in protest of mass arrests of opposition activists and Armenia's perceived transformation into a police state.⁴  Following the campaign, some three dozen NGOs created a coalition advocating political reform. The coalition, called Partnership for Open Society, unsuccessfully lobbied for more serious changes in the Armenian constitution and electoral code throughout 2005. The government did, however, give in to pressure from local environmental protection groups in June 2005, when it decided to reroute a planned new highway that would have passed through one of Armenia's last remaining virgin forests.

The Armenian media operate in a more hostile environment than the NGOs, with the authorities continuing to maintain tight control over the state-owned Armenian Public Television and virtually all private channels, which are owned by businesspeople loyal to Kocharian and rarely air reports critical of his administration. Their reporters are believed to operate under editorial censorship. The only TV station critical of the authorities, A1+, was controversially pulled off the air in 2002. Its repeated attempts to resume broadcasting have been thwarted by the Kocharian-controlled National Commission on Television and Radio. The regulatory body likewise rejected an A1+ bid to obtain an FM radio frequency in February 2005. The Armenian newspapers (virtually all of them privately owned) are far more diverse and free, but their low circulation seriously limits their ability to inform the public.

From 2003 to 2005, virtually no libel suits were filed against the media. Nor did the authorities use a controversial clause in the Armenian criminal code that allows them to prosecute journalists for defamation of character. Still, the year 2004 saw the worst-ever government-sanctioned violence against journalists. At least four were severely beaten by special police while covering the brutal break up of an antigovernment demonstration in Yerevan. The beatings were never investigated by law enforcement authorities. "The impunity surrounding these attacks made journalists more vulnerable," the New York - based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a subsequent report.⁵  In a separate incident, a photojournalist was assaulted by several men after photographing luxury villas belonging to senior government and law enforcement officials. Although one person was sentenced to six months imprisonment for the attack in October 2004, the bodyguard of a senior police officer, who reportedly provoked the assault, was not prosecuted.

Internet users as well as writers, musicians, and other artists are not known to have faced any government restrictions. Economic problems and poor enforcement of copyright laws are far more serious obstacles to free cultural expression.

Recommendations

•  The Armenian authorities should make firm and resolute efforts to curtail election fraud. 
  
•  The authorities should at last start enforcing legal provisions that make vote buying a serious crime.
  
•  President Kocharian must end the de facto impunity enjoyed by increasingly feared oligarchs.
  
•  Armenia needs a deeper, consensus-based reform of its flawed constitution. 
  
•  The ruling regime should lift restrictions on the electronic media, permit A1+ to resume broadcasting, investigate instances of unwarranted violence against journalists, and bring those responsible to trial.

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