Armenia: summing up the political year

Susanna Petrosyan, Yerevan, exclusively to VK

The year 2013 became the year of completion of the electoral cycle that started with the parliamentary elections on 12 May 2012 and ended in 2013 with the presidential elections and elections to the Yerevan Council of Elders .

The feature of the presidential election on February 18 was the fact that they were not attended by the two most important figures in the political field - the leader of "The Armenian National Congress” (ANC), ex- President Levon Ter- Petrosyan, and the Chairman of the "Prosperous Armenia" Party (PAP), Gagik Tsarukyan. Both of these politicians could gain a lot of votes and create problems for the authorities. However, they refused to participate in the elections for various reasons. In this regard, a very important reason is the technical one - the imperfection of the electoral legislation, which gives clear advantages to the incumbent president .

After the presidential election the leader of the small opposition "Heritage" party, Raffi Hovannisian, who came second, tried to organize a protest campaign, which, however, turned out haphazard and has not received adequate support from other opposition forces. This is due to the fact that Hovannisian and his colleagues for several years were engaged in attacks on other opposition parties. As a result, the PAP, accused by "Heritage" of relations with the government, and the ANC party, which was subjected to withering criticism by those around Hovannisian for virtually any step, expressed a lukewarm attitude to the campaign of protest.

Another significant event was the final formation of a stable group in the parliament, more than 45 members of four opposition factions: the ANC, PAP, "Heritage" and "Dashnaktsutiun" (ARF), which regularly vote against the key issues – the draft budget and the vote of confidence in the government, as well as other important bills against the ruling coalition.

All four political forces are in sufficient cohesion. This concerns the question of the pension system, when their factions initiated the convening of an extraordinary session of the parliament and then a rally and march against the introduction of this system; they also appealed to the Constitutional Court with a joint statement disputing the legality of the pension reform.

They acted in a consolidated way during the discussion of the report of the Control Chamber, when discussing the legality of the agreement on selling Armenia’s last 20% stake owned by the government in the joint Armenian-Russian company "ArmRosGazmprom" with "Gazprom".

Although the government is trying to “shut up” the opposition through a variety of information manipulations, the end of the year showed that these forces are still active .

In general, the political year is not particularly different from the previous ones: we see again that the numerous attempts by the opposition to change anything in the country were met with a firm and cohesive resistance of the ruling Republican Party. But the opposition began to act in a more consolidated way, and the range of issues on which they work together become broader. The position of the ANC, which is based on the principle of not criticizing on any matter the forces which are not in power, is more and more taken over by the rest of the opposition parties.

In terms of foreign policy orientation, only one of the parties may be called openly pro-Western: this is the "Heritage" party . The rest follow a balanced policy towards the West and Russia.

As for the RPA, it should be noted that formally it dominates the political field, but there are some points that should disturb it – for example, the events during the election of the mayor in Ararat, when a candidate from the Republican Party was ahead of his rival from the PAP by only 300 votes, making maximum use of the vast resources of the RPA .

Meanwhile the attempts to form a powerful alternative protest movement, besides the current opposition, have so far failed. The main players in the field of the opposition remained the ANC, PAP, ARF and "Heritage".