III. Background

Early Post-Soviet Politics and Society in Armenia

Armenia was propelled to independence as the Soviet Union unraveled in 1991. As elsewhere in the Soviet republics, a nationalist movement had emerged at the end of the 1980s to directly challenge one-party Communist rule. In 1990 many Soviet republics held multiparty elections for their national legislatures; in Armenia these were won by the Armenian Pan-National Movement (ANM).[1] A reformist, nationalist-oriented government was installed, which in September 1991 held an independence referendum that produced a 94 percent vote in favor.[2] Armenia achieved independence when the Soviet Union ceased to exist at the end of 1991, and this independence was internationally recognized in early 1992. 

In Armenia, a catalyst for the nascent nationalist movement was the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave within neighboring Azerbaijan with a majority ethnic Armenian population. Confrontation started in early 1988 when the local ethnic Armenian population, backed by Armenia, sought through its legislature to separate the enclave from Azerbaijani administration and transfer it to Armenia. Political confrontation tipped into outright conflict with an anti-Armenian pogrom in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait at the end of February, and mass expulsions from Armenia and Azerbaijan of their respective Azeri and Armenian minorities.[3] The conflict escalated in 1991 into full-scale war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It raged on through Armenia's first independence years, with Armenian forces gaining the upper hand, until a ceasefire in 1994.[4] The conflict remains unresolved, and as a consequence, Armenia's border with Azerbaijan is closed, as is its border with Turkey (which supports Azerbaijan), complicating foreign trade relations and economic development.[5] The Karabakh conflict continues to loom large in Armenian political life, as the basis on which many leading politicians have built their careers and connections.

Adding to the dire conditions surrounding Armenia's independence, in 1991 the country had barely begun to recover from a December 1988 earthquake that had massively damaged the north, including Armenia's second and third cities Gyumri and Vanadzor, and killed some 25,000 people.[6] And as everywhere in the former Soviet Union, the abrupt end of central economic planning and subsidies and the switch to market conditions caused a catastrophic economic contraction that did not turn around until 1994.[7] Unemployment, food shortages, and drastic rationing of public utilities forced hundreds of thousands to emigrate from Armenia, temporarily or permanently, for work.[8]

The Ter-Petrossian presidency, 1991-98

The Armenian Pan-National Movement had evolved out of the Karabakh Committee, founded in 1988 by a group of Armenian intellectuals, which championed the Karabakh cause inside Armenia.[9] Levon Ter-Petrossian entered politics as one of the Karabakh Committee's and later the ANM's leaders.[10] When the ANM won the 1990 parliamentary elections he became parliamentary chairman and titular head of state. He went on to win Armenia's first presidential election, held in October 1991 while Armenia was still formally part of the Soviet Union, with 83 percent of the vote, and led the country to independence.[11]

As president during the troubled first years of independence, Ter-Petrossian struggled to maintain popular support. He was reelected in 1996 only by a narrow margin (see below). In 1997 he advocated compromise with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh; this, together with lingering questions about the legitimacy of his election victory the year before, cost him the presidency. He was forced to step down in early 1998 when the then defense minister, Vazgen Sargsyan, a prominent former Karabakh war commander, called for his resignation and 40 members of parliament quit the bloc that supported the president.[12]

Robert Kocharyan, a Karabakhi whom Ter-Petrossian had appointed prime minister in 1997, took over as acting president (as the constitution required), and went on to win the early presidential election held in March 1998. In May 1999 parliamentary elections the ANM was routed, holding on to only one seat in the 131-seat National Assembly. Vazgen Sargsyan became prime minister.

Prevailing Characteristics of Armenian Party Politics

On October 27, 1999, five gunmen entered the National Assembly chamber while the Assembly was in session with the government present. They took the entire chamber hostage, and assassinated prime minister Vazgen Sargsyan, parliamentary speaker Karen Demirchyan, and six other ministers and parliamentarians.[13] They then gave themselves up. After a protracted trial, five persons, including the group's leader, were sentenced in December 2003 to life imprisonment.[14] It has never been fully explained what motivated the attack: the gunmen claimed to have been acting on their own initiative,[15] and despite abundant conspiracy theories, no convincing evidence surfaced to suggest that any political leader or party was behind the attack. Nevertheless, the killings left a leadership void in the political establishment.

Armenia in the post-Soviet era has held four parliamentary elections and four presidential elections. It has remained stuck in a cycle of unfair contests, fraud, and disputes that more often than not spill onto the streets. There is low public confidence in the way elections are run, and widespread cynicism about their outcome.[16] The functioning of Armenia's multiparty system and genuine political competition are hampered by the persistent failure of the array of political parties to stabilize and consolidate-established parties have waxed and waned dramatically, fragmented, and major new players have emerged, with almost every parliamentary election.

Disputes and Violence a Fixture in Armenian Elections

Ter-Petrossian's reelection, 1996

Ter-Petrossian ran for reelection in September 1996, his main challenger being fellow ANM founder Vazgen Manukyan, around whom most of the opposition had rallied. Ter-Petrossian passed the 50 percent threshold required for a first-round outright victory by just under 22,000 votes, but discrepancies of an almost identical number were recorded in the official results both in terms of ballot papers issued to polling stations but subsequently unaccounted for, and ballot papers recorded as issued but not recorded as being present in the ballot boxes.[17] On the basis of these and other irregularities international observers called into question the integrity of the overall election process.[18] The opposition's own suspicions of electoral fraud brought protestors onto the streets of Yerevan: demonstrators marched on and broke into the National Assembly, where the Central Election Commission (CEC) was then housed, to demand a recount. In the process protestors beat up the parliamentary speaker and deputy speaker. In response, police beat demonstrators and later arrested at least 28 opposition leaders and supporters and CEC staffers.[19] In the wake of these events, police detained about 200 more individuals believed to have participated in the demonstration, President Ter-Petrossian banned public demonstrations and called in army troops to patrol Yerevan, and the prosecutor general announced his intention to bring criminal charges against Vazgen Manukyan and seven other opposition leaders, for attempting to violently overthrow the government. Police closed the offices of, among others, the National Democratic Union, Manukyan's party.[20]

These were not the first political party restrictions imposed by Ter-Petrossian's administration. At the end of 1994 Ter-Petrossian had suspended the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), a major opposition party, and ordered the closure of 12 media outlets allegedly associated with it, claiming that the ARF had become a cover for a secret organization allegedly responsible for terrorism, drug trafficking, and illegal arms trading. In January 1995 the Supreme Court upheld the ARF's suspension for a six-month period, citing, however, not threats to national security, but the presence of foreigners in the party's board. The government claimed that it was by mere coincidence that the six-month suspension was to lapse just after parliamentary elections (Armenia's first post-Soviet elections) on July 5, 1996. The government allowed individual ARF members to run for parliament, but the party's absence paved the way for a resounding victory of Ter-Petrossian's ANM.[21]

Kocharyan's 1998 election and 2003 reelection

The snap 1998 presidential election went to two rounds, with Robert Kocharyan beating Karen Demirchyan in the second-round runoff. Election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) found both rounds to have been marred by extensive fraud, and stated outright that the second round did not meet OSCE standards.[22]

Kocharyan was reelected in 2003 in an election that also went to two rounds and was again marred by irregularities.[23] The OSCE once again found the election fell short of international standards for democratic elections, declaring that the overall process failed to provide equal conditions for the candidates; voting, counting, and tabulation showed serious irregularities including widespread ballot box stuffing; and the political atmosphere was charged and marred by intimidation. The OSCE found, "The failure of the 2003 presidential election to meet international standards lay not in technical or procedural lapses, but in a lack of sufficient political determination by the authorities to ensure a fair and honest process."[24]

Between the announcement of preliminary first round results on February 20, 2003, and the official start of the second round campaign, the opposition who supported second-placed candidate Stepan Demirchyan held large unsanctioned rallies in Yerevan. Police on February 22 began detaining opposition supporters for alleged hooliganism and/or participation in unsanctioned public meetings: At least 200 individuals were detained including many opposition staff, and many were sentenced to up to 15 days of administrative detention, a clear attempt to damage the opposition prior to the runoff election held on March 5.[25] Following publication of the preliminary second-round results, the opposition resumed protest gatherings in Yerevan and staged a picket outside the CEC building for several days up to the announcement of the final results.[26]

Stepan Demirchyan challenged the 2003 second-round results in the Constitutional Court. The Court did not rule in his favor, but struck down results in 40 polling stations, and recommended that the National Assembly and president hold a "referendum of confidence" within a year.[27]On April 12, 2004 (almost a year to the day from the Constitutional Court ruling), Armenia's political opposition united in mass peaceful protests to force this "referendum of confidence" on President Kocharyan and to call for his resignation. The government dispersed the demonstrations using excessive force: repeating the cycle of repressive tactics from the 2003 election, the authorities arrested opposition leaders and supporters, violently dispersed demonstrators, raided political party headquarters, attacked journalists, and restricted travel to prevent people from participating in demonstrations. In response to international pressure, the government released some opposition leaders detained during the crackdown, and participated in discussions about cooperation with the opposition.[28] However, the referendum recommended in the 2003 Constitutional Court ruling never happened.