Why did a referendum on enlargement of village communities fail in Armenia?

Susanna Petrosyan, Yerevan. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza

The Armenian government plans to fulfill a program of administrative and territorial reforms of the country, which requires enlargement of village communities for improvement of management effectiveness. To define the practicability of enlargement, it was decided to hold some pilot projects and local referendums. In the framework of the first pilot project, a referendum was held in 22 residential areas of the Lori, Syunik, and Tavush Regions on May 17th.

The Central Electoral Commission of Armenia published the results of the referendum, according to which residents of Tavush and Lori didn’t support the idea of enlargement of village communities. Only the sparsely populated region of Syunik (the Syunik Region takes the second-to-last place in Armenia in the number of residents) voted for the idea. The referendum in Syunik, where 94% of residents supported the enlargement, had high voter turnout. The point was not only in village communities, but also in the future community center – Tatev. Meanwhile, the number of residents of many villages in Lori and Tavush, who participated in referendums, didn’t exceed 20-25% of the whole number of voters.

However, according to the preliminary data by the CEC, 68% of voters from Lori supported enlargement into one community with the center in Tumanyan; 70% of voters of Tavush voted for the future community center in Dilizhan. However, the CEC presented average figures which didn’t reflect all the details. For positive results of the referendum, it is necessary to gain votes not only from residents of the future community center, but also from residents of villages which are planned to be united into one big community.

According to the law, the results of the referendum are defined in the following way: the number of voters who supported the idea should be at least one third of the general number of voters. Therefore, even in case of total falsifications, the authorities needed the support of at least one third of voters; but it didn’t happen. The referendum failed in the Lori and Tavush Regions due to low voter turnout. Some experts think that the results of the referendum reflect the attitudes of rural residents.

During the discussion of the program, despite the fact that the government’s representatives promised that the enlargement wouldn’t lead to dismissal of village administrations and job cuts, rural residents were dissatisfied with the possible enlargement of communities, as they believed that the government had deprived villages of independence. Many citizens think that administrative and territorial reform will not only lead to unemployment, but also cause new bureaucratic obstacles, transport difficulties, making issues of land distribution in communities unclear.

The Armenian National Congress voted against the program. According to the opposition faction, the idea of enlargement is dangerous, as mechanically uniting communities will lead to a loss of independence of villages; the principle of self-administration of their revenues will be broken; the participation of local residents in the management of communities will be canceled. The ANC is also concerned about the fact that the new community centers may absorb all resources; it will cause clear disproportion in the development of villages. The secretary of the faction, Aram Manukyan, thinks that the enlargement will lead to internal migration.

“The main goal of enlargement is that communities could solve problems which they are facing together. However, in the Armenian reality, the communities which have no financial resources won’t benefit from the enlargement; they will get new problems only,” an economist Vilen Khachatryan thinks. He says that mechanical enlargement won’t lead to economic effectiveness, when the infrastructure of village communities is not developed and their main problems are not solved. According to the nongovernmental organization the Union of Municipal Financiers of Armenia, in 80% of village communities capital commitment doesn’t exceed 5%; the rest is spent on the administrative apparatus.

Citizens’ attitude to reforms is reflected in their passive attitude to the referendum. The authorities couldn’t provide the necessary 33.3% for a positive result in the referendum. In fact, the residents of Lori and Tavush boycotted the governmental initiative. The heads of village administrations, who usually play a big role in providing necessary voter turnout, haven’t been interested in a positive result of the referendum this time. Even though the government promises that employees of administrations won’t be dismissed due to the program, it seems the concerns of village administrations about the enlargement of village communities have real grounds.