The Armenian Observer Journal

With only six hours to go till the polling stations close in Armenia, the international media seem to be largely uninterested in the developments here, with very basic coverage of the elections only available from major international news agencies, as well as the BBC and Euronews.

The elections are largely described as a transfer of power from outgoing leader Robert Kocharyan to his ally and prime minister Serzh Sarksyan. All international media reports point to economic growth, as the main factor in favor of Serzh Sargsyan - described as the clear frontrunner, although some point to doubts about the validity of the polls indicating Prime Minister's high rating.

The BBC describes the Armenian elections as "fiercely-contested", resulting from the dramatic comeback of Armenia's former President Levon Ter-Petrosian as an opposition candidate.

Bloomberg is mostly concentrating on the possibility of street protests by the opposition over raising concerns that the vote may be rigged. The information service points to the fact, that Armenia is under pressure from U.S. and the European Union to strengthen its democracy at a time when it is receiving hundred of millions of dollars in aid, indicating, that there have already been charges against the authorities by the main opposition challenger Levon Ter-Petrossian of government attempts to control the vote and ensure Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan's victory.

Reuters also notes, the opposition claims, that the campaign has been unfair, and predicts street protests, as in the case of previous elections in Armenia which "have been followed by mass opposition protests alleging ballot fraud. However, the news service notes the polls, which "give Sarksyan a lead over the rest of the field, led by former former speaker of parliament Artur Baghdasaryan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan, a former president who was forced to resign in 1998 but is now seeking a comeback, and quotes Sarksyan saying:"
If there is a second round I would prefer to fight against Levon Ter-Petrosyan".

Euronews is highlighting the fact, that "failure of the opposition to unite around a single candidate has boosted Sarksyan's chances", and predicting, that upon election "Sarksyan will have to deal with the so-called "frozen" conflict over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh".

The "Nagorno-Karabakh" perspective is also covered by Agence France-Presse, which also indicates, that Serzh Sarkisian, seen as the fruntrunner, is likely to follow in Kocharian's footsteps if elected -- pursuing close ties with Moscow and maintaining a hawkish stance in relations with neighbouring Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Originally posted at The Armenian Observer Blog

Photos: Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2008

Armenia Election Monitor 2008 brings the first photos of the election day - "Finally the day has arrived", writes Onnik Krikoryan with relief, "Whatever the outcome one thing is certain. In this round or a possible second, Armenia will elect a new president in a vote that international observers hope will represent a marked improvement over the last presidential election in 2003."

in Armenian

Despite rapid political developments and political campaign pouring onto the Armenian voter from all sides, many people haven't yet made up their mind about which presidential candidate to support. The situation is similar offline - that is to say in real life, as well as online - in the virtual reality of Internet diaries. «Which is the right thing - having a stance, or not?», Christina is asking in her «One day...» blog, further explaining:

I can't decide on my stance for the upcoming presidential elections. I want a change - but I don't see anyone, who could show me - a regular person with mediocre abilities and feelings, the way to those changes.

( Read more... )

Leading Armenian Online News resource - A1plus has launched an official YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/a1plusnews address, where news, videos, archive materials and exclusive videos, not published even on the main A1plus website will be made available. The first video uploaded so far is a funny one. At the Press Conference Levon Ter-Petrossian gave on January 11th, days after the publication of his pre-election program, the Regnum correspondent starts a question to the First President, starting with the words: "Mr President, when you are elected..." and then suddenly sneezes. This triggers a wave of laughter, because Armenians believe, that sneezing indicates truthfulness of a statement, hence, she seems to be confirming, that Ter-Petrossian will be elected.

Well, I guess it takes more then a sneeze to become the President of Armenia, but the video is excellent anyway. Thanks to A1plus for making it available.

Original post at The Armenian Observer Blog.

Opposition Rally, Liberty Square, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian/Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Vigorous politicisation of the Armenian section of Internet is observed as the February 19 Presidential elections draw near. A number of official websites endorsing different candidates have been launched. Already there are websites for Levon Ter-Petrossian, Vazgen Manukyan, Vahan Hovhannisyan, Artur Baghdasaryan and Serge Sargsyan (sorted in the order I found out about them, many thanks to Onnik Krikoryan for pointing me to these sites). Sections related to the elections have appeared in the websites of Republican Party of Armenia, Prosperous Armenia/ Bargavach Hayastan and United Liberal National Party/MIAK parties.

Passport and invitations department at RA police has presented the list of Armenian voters based on polling stations to the Central Electoral Commission, which has been placed in the Central Electoral Commission’s website, and as was the case with the previous elections, every Internet connected voter may check their names in the list and find out which polling station they will be voting, and where that particular station is located. By the way, 2 311 917 voters were registered this time, which is 5 983 less then the previous - May 12, 2007 Parliamentary elections.

A range of information websites dedicated to the upcoming elections have been launched, including the http://elections.a1plus.am/ of A1plus, http://www.echannel.am - by Internews Armenia and http://www.elections2008.am - by MediaMax News Agency. Nearly all news, information and interactive web portals offer Internet polls of various integrity and very contradictory results. It seems that the biggest number of voters have taken part in the Online Poll at the Persons.am, with Levon Ter-Petrossian leading by 52%, followed by Vahan Hovhannisyan at 16% and Serge Sargsyan with 15%. This poll however most likely grossly falsified, because I was able to vote for my favourite candidate - Vahan Hovhannisyan at least 4 times, with no obvious difficulty. A more secure online poll carried out at Uzogh’s blog has revealed, that of 136 bloggers taking part at the vote, majority are supporting Vazgen Manukyan - holding 32% of the voter sympathy.

Armenian blogs and the Armenian section of the video-sharing service YouTube present a special case. One can discuss, curse and blackmail any presidential candidate or all of them at once. As veteran-bloger Samvel Martirosyan has rightly noted, one can even conduct virtual rallies and demonstrations on the blogosphere. A range of agitational blogs have been registered in the LiveJournal section of the Armenian blogosphere, who are carrying out a rather rough and inefficient electoral campaigns among the bloggers in favor of their preferred candidates - Levon Ter-Petrossian and Serge Sargsyan, but doing it in such a dumb manner, that their efforts are triggering general discontent and anger of the already established bloggers, rather then achieving anything.

One thing however remains a puzzle for me looking at all this internetised electoral campaign - with Internet usage among the general population in Armenia remaining much too low to have any substantial impact, what, why and for whom are all these internet resources created? What are all these efforts for? It is really hard for me to imagine, that an average statistical voter would bother to check, if Artur Baghdasaryan or Vahan Hovhannisyan have already uploaded their campaign manifesto on their nice new pre-election websites or no…

Ahead of February 2008 Presidential elections to be held in Armenia, the recent developments in the Armenian politics have greatly antagonized the Armenian media landscape, triggering a range of negative trends in the coverage of political, social, economic reporting issues.

( Read more... )

As it has been noted earlier on several occasions on this blog, the leader of the opposition Heritage party, Former Foreign Minister of Armenia Raffi Hovhannisyan, has been applying for Armenian citizenship since 1991, however, it was only granted to him in 2001 by President Robert Kocharyan. According to Article 50 of the Armenian Constitution, in order to be eligible to run for president the candidates must be older then thirty five, and must have been citizen of the Republic of Armenia for the preceding ten years, having permanently resided in the Republic for the preceding ten years. Hence, at the moment Raffi hovhannisyan is not eligible to run for president, despite the fact, that Heritage party led by him is one of two opposition factions represented in Parliament and Raffi Hovhannisyan is the opposition figure with highest rating among population according to a recent survey by British ComRes organization.

Many people received an email today from Info Heritage containing MS Word and PDF attachments sent by the Heritage Party. The English translation of the attachments is posted on the E-channel.am information portal, here are some extracts: