Once again, presidential elections in Armenia took place according to the scenario widely prevalent in post-Soviet countries, i.e. both for the society and in terms of the political landscape; the post-election processes were more relevant than the elections themselves.

Presidential elections in Azerbaijan will take place in the fall of 2008. It was in order to obtain commentary regarding developments that have already transpired and are yet to occur that we had drafted a set of questions for a select group of Armenian and Azeri experts. We had assumed that the election results and the expectation they left in their wake would have to depict the prevalent realities in both societies and uncover the possible changers in them. The interviews with these experts have already been published in “Hetq”, “168 Hours” and in the Azeri newspaper “Novoye Vremya”.

However, at the beginning of the year, it was difficult to ponder that the Azeri pre-election society described by the Azeri experts in their interviews would be so different from present Armenian society and that the transformations that have occurred in our midst were possible in such a short period of time. For isn’t it the case that Armenian society found itself in the same apathetic situation in the fall of last year, a situation concisely and pointedly presented by one of the Azeri experts when describing the dominant mood within his country; “The society lives in a non-competitive political, economic, business, informational and civil environment.” After weighing the claims of the other interviewed Azeri experts the upcoming October elections will take place “removed” from the society and that this time they will also end with pre-determined results being announced.

The elections in Armenia were to have taken place in more or less the same manner, that is to say with the expected results despite the fact that due to first President Ter-Petrosyan’s reemergence in the arena there was a relatively large degree of intrigue that was created; something that hadn’t been seen up till then. At most, what was foreseeable for me even during the months of December - January was that the scenario of the transfer of power from Robert Kocharyan to Serzh Sargsyan wouldn’t take place smoothly, that it would be delayed by the need for a second stage of elections arising from objective conditions. For me, the likelihood of events reaching a second round was conditioned on the fact that this version of victory for the regime’s favorite son, who needed a full storehouse of legitimacy, would be more impressive and credible in the eyes of the outside world. In Armenia, as in other post-Soviet countries, it has only been of late that the concept of the need of elections to be credible first and foremost domestically, for one’s own society, has taken hold.

On April 9th the levers of government power passed from one member of the regime to another, but this happened under the most tragic of circumstances; it wrenched all segments of society without exception and fundamentally changed it in the process. The last time that a State of Emergency was declared in Armenia was by the Soviet authorities. Confrontations on such a wide scale and with such consequences between the society and law enforcement in Armenia had never been witnessed before. It has never happened that at the same time such a festive event with official significance as the swearing in ceremony of the newly elected president you would see an entire segment of society pouring out into the streets to commemorate a totally opposite and tragic occasion. Nevertheless, it wasn’t possible to neither change the date of the swearing in ceremony nor postpone the 40-day requiem ceremony for those who died the night of March 1st. For these two incomparable events to take place on the same day and hour in the same city, only a few miles apart, really brought those emotions that the society was living during the days immediately after the clashes to the surface.

The Azeri experts claim that in their country even the prospect of “undergoing the process of imitating democratic reforms” is denied to them. Everyone there has already understood that there’s no longer any demand to expend additional energy just to engage in democratic games and that due to its oil reserves Azerbaijan has carte-blanche to do as it pleases internally and escape punishment for its actions. On the contrary, in Armenia the thesis regarding the necessity of holding free and transparent elections has long since established a deep hold in the social-political discourse. Democracy, as the sole capital that the government possesses that can lead to the solution of diverse and even hugely important problems such as the Karabakh conflict, has long been spoken about practically in all circles quite fervently. The impressions received from the “correct”, showcased parliamentary elections in Armenian in 2007, especially the praiseworthy evaluations of European institutions, weren’t that significant for large segments of the population. It’s hard to say if the reason for this was because parliamentary elections in Armenia mostly interest those political figures actually participating in them and their stalwart supporters and not the society as a whole? Or perhaps it was because at the time of those “exemplary elections” there was no real competition to speak of and because there was no overall danger that the Republican and Prosperous Armenia parties would wind up in the minority. Thus, there was no need to take risks or to wage a struggle to win seats at any cost. The players involved were well acquainted with one another from way back and could predict the actions of their counterparts as well. Nothing out of the ordinary was to be expected despite the fact that the newly created “Impeachment” group had also participated.

The reality of Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s return was that it was a sensation in and of itself since during the entire period after handing in his resignation he never commented on the steps taken by the authorities regarding the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. In fact, he often bluntly refused the requests of reporters to comment on the issue, thus creating a mysterious impression of silence. But all the while it was exactly this issue, the settlement of the Karabakh problem, that there was regime change in Armenia in 1998. In subsequent years there were more than enough real occasions for Ter-Petrosyan to take advantage of and take “counter steps”.

The views of Levon Ter-Petrosyan on the Karabakh conflict, according to the modest evaluations of Armenian and Azeri experts, are presently termed as “A softer approach leading towards a settlement”. This however (the nominal difference between Ter-Petrosyan and the formulations officially accepted in Armenia during the past decade) wasn’t, in my estimation the reason that he had the possibility to regain the role of being a serious political factor. It is possible to confidently state that the protestors that rallied around him didn’t do so because of the differences in his views regarding the Karabakh issue but rather because of a host of reasons interconnected to it. The essential ones dealt with the stance displayed by the authorities and other opposition forces directed personally to this figure on every conceivable matter. Even though the Karabakh conflict was broached more intensively and emotionally during this election period than during any other election since 1998, as a whole, the issue didn’t play much of a factor in the minds of the masses. There were two other reasons why the Karabakh conflict was given such wide play during the election run-up. One was fairly banal - if the reason for removing Levon Ter-Petrosyan back then was the Karabakh conflict then the main argument for his “political destruction” now would be the same issue. Perhaps it appeared to presidential candidate Tigran Karapetyan, who relatively recently arrived in Armenia from Russia, that it would be a clever propaganda ploy to show photos of a frozen-over Yerevan in the 1990’s that would conjure up images of the blockade of Leningrad and the slogan, “Don’t vote for the past, vote for the future”. But isn’t it true that both Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, who directed, coordinated and participated in defensive operations in Karabakh, knew all to well the “heavy cost of the war” paid by all, from the authorities at the top to the average person down below.

During the days of the State of Emergency the clashes between Azeri and Karabakh forces while short-lived saw the use of a wider range of military hardware. This clash directed the theme of the Karabakh conflict, on the level of internal propaganda on a slightly altered, but not completely different path. Statements laden with motives such as, “Let’s see who is pursuing the interests of the state and who, merely to accomplish a set of narrow personal or political aims, takes steps that threaten the state”, are as old as the existence of the struggle for power in general. The fairly blunt declaration adopted by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) on the Armenian issue will surely serve as an occasion to widen the scope of this theme during internal discussions. However, from the one side, it is now very difficult to classify all the other nine candidates and other political forces according to the accepted mechanism according to which all pro-regime forces have pursued and continue to pursue state interests while the other side, the opposition forces, are pursuing dishonorable, narrow personal interests. This is the case since the essential struggle during all stages of the elections, including the period after the March 1st incidents, took place based on the principle that, “We are all opposed to Levon Ter-Petrosyan”.

Under pressure to implement democratic elections and also on the eve of the presidential elections, they understood not so much how the actual players would accept the elections involved, namely the electorate and the political forces, but more so how the outside world would react to the process. However, as a result of talking about the elections so much, people more and more began to tie their expectations directly to the elections and to believe this or that thesis or opinion that a display of protest would have a sobering effect. This was especially the case since against the backdrop of election related discussions a new, young generation had matured with a demand for justice. I of course can understand what public orator Alvard Petrosyan actually wished to say when she claimed, in one of her meetings with reporters, that the problems of Armenia derived from the fact that the authorities had been convincing the people very persistently for a long time that they constituted the electorate. In that case however, why organize elections at all if during the process such an important and painful question as Karabakh needs to be thrown into the mix along with the “exclamations and destructive exhortations” linked to it. To both perceive and digest the latter it is not sufficient to be part of the people, nor of a forged electorate.

Of course, this isn’t the only index of the deep social processes taking place in Armenia whose fast-paced transformations are the reason why it is difficult to give a uniform evaluation. However, one thing is crystal clear - that the voters, who approached the ballot box on February 19th and present-day society, in its entirety, constitute two different phenomena, public sectors and two different political factors. More than ever, they are taking into account the post-election society, which they now call the people, and if the authorities are paying heed to the calls regarding dialogue it is only so that they can “demolish” the army of citizens supporting the voices of the political opposition. Will Levon Ter-Petrosyan and the forces that have rallied around him be able to remain influential players in the domestic political game? It is difficult to say, because in case of countries undergoing so-called democratic transformation, which was how Armenia had been classified until recently, everything is done to weaken the voices of the political opposition after elections. Perhaps the aim of this is to politically decimate those voices in the eyes of the future electorate.