Alexei Vlasov exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
2013 marks a milestone for the South Caucasus countries. The presidential elections in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia are zero hour for political elites. In the 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to pro-government experts, stable management systems have been established, the balance in relations between the authorities and the opposition was formed. However, every electorate cycle in the South Caucasus is always a stress situation for the society and the elite. 2013 is not an exception. Moreover, all countries of the region has a common tendency: the crisis of the old opposition and appearance of new and more radical rivals of the current authorities.
Armenia
The Republican Party’s leader Serge Sargsyan won the February elections. It was predicted by the majority of international experts. However, the gap between him and the second place which was taken by the leader of the opposition party of Heritage, Raffi Ovannisyan, appeared to be small – 58% and 36.7%.
The third president of Armenia was heavily criticized for clanship of the power, corruption, unsettlement of the huge amount of socio-economic problems, but his opponents had no alternative program of reforms. The elections turned into a fight between persons, not ideas.
Ovannosyan is a politician from “the old charger”, well-known in Armenia, but never being a contender for the presidential throne. He accumulated the significant part of the protest electorate because other promising candidates – the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan and one of the richest persons of the country Gagik Tsarukyan – decided not to take part in the elections. Many experts thought that the decision by the leader of Prosperous Armenia was about business. It was too risky for his business, and Tsarukyan wasn’t ready for this.
Anyway, for Ovannisyan the success will probably be the last, and the May elections to the city council of the Armenian capital confirmed this. The coalition “Hello, Yerevan” got only six seats in the Council of the Elders.
Meanwhile, the internal problems of the Armenian society are still relevant. The outflow of the population from the country gains a disastrous character. Probably the elections of 2018 will have a different, tougher scenario. The country demands modernization – both political and socio-economic.
Azerbaijan
The elections of 2013 in Azerbaijan can become the last chance to consolidate “the old opposition” which almost 20 years tries to resist at first Heydar Aliyev, then his son, the current President Ilham Aliyev. The National Front, Musavat, some other party structures managed to gather into the National Council of Democratic Forces and even choose a candidate who deserves to represent the opposition – the popular social activist Rustam Ibragimbekov.
However, it is still unclear whether Ibragimbekov will manage to register as a presidential candidate, because a criminal case was initiated against him and he has Russian citizenship. But the point is not in technical moments. Just like in Armenia, we have obvious contradiction between ambitions, rather than political programs. Behind-the-scene games play more significant role than competition in the public field. So, there is no guarantee that the leader of Musavat Isa Gambar won’t decide to be a separate presidential candidate at the last moment. Moreover, that the program of NCDF is standard: fighting corruption, extension of the mass media freedoms, settlement of social issues – any opposition leader will match the mottos.
At the same time, the so-called “net opposition activists” who represent little-known youth opposition organizations, can represent a bigger danger for the current authorities. They don’t like behind-the-scene negotiations, they are more technological and have good contacts in embassies of Western countries. They can be a serious resource in the future.
Nobody doubts that Ilham Aliyev will win the elections in October. The question is what lessons the authorities will learn from the victory. I think it is notable that there are a lot of discussions of staff shifts in Baku after the presidential elections.
Georgia
In October, the presidential elections will also take place in Georgia. But the Georgian situation is the most different in the political context of the South Caucasus. An actual diarchy can be seen here during the whole year, which is accompanied by fighting between President Mikhail Saakashvili and Premier Bidzina Ivanishvili. The rivalry will define the presidential election campaign.
The point is not in who will win personally, but whose protégé he or she will be. Anyway, a voter will be behind a candidate either Saakashvili or Ivanishvili. The intrigue is improved by Ivanishvili’s promise to leave politics right after the presidential elections. However, many experts doubt that this promise will be fulfilled. No politician from the environment of Ivanishvili has such personal popularity and political weight, like the current prime minister of Georgia has, so his participation in the “big game” is the main guarantee from revenge of Saakashvili’s supporters. As for candidates from the United National Movement, David Bakradze yields to such figures from the presidential team as Gigi Ugulava and Vano Merabishvili, from the rating point of view. But scandalous criminal cases shortened the list of possible candidates from the former party of power. In this context, Georgy Margvelashvili, the minister of science in Ivanishvili’s government, seems to be a more promising candidate. At the same time, Nikolai Silayev, the senior scientist of the Center of Problems of the Caucasus and Regional Security under MGIMO, programs of Margvelashvili and Bakradze are similar. “The peculiarity of the game is that there are no alternatives to the program goals which Saakashvili stated: differing from Russia, integration into European-Atlantic structures, and liberal economy,” Silayev noted. The main problem is that whether settlement of diarchy can solve the problems Georgian society faces.
