Ter-Petrossian, allies regroup, revise tactics

by Vincent Lima

Published: Saturday May 10, 2008

Yerevan - (May 10, 2008) Former president Levon Ter-Petrossian and the political groups aligned with him have moved to constitute themselves as a new organization, the Armenian National Congress. They met at a congress held at the Armenian government's large meeting hall on May 2.

On September 21, 2007, Mr. Ter-Petrossian broke his decade-long silence and returned to politics with a stinging attack on his successor and a reiteration of his longstanding position that Armenia cannot prosper as long as the Karabakh conflict is not formally resolved. Soon after, he entered the presidential race. On March 8, 2008, Armenia's Constitutional Court confirmed the results of Armenia's presidential elections - and Mr. Ter-Petrossian's defeat.

Success

The 32 weeks that elapsed between those two events saw two important victories for Mr. Ter-Petrossian.

The first was his rehabilitation. A man who had commanded over 80 percent of the popular vote when elected president in October 1991, Mr. Ter-Petrossian came to be widely reviled during his presidency and had approval ratings in the low single digits when he reemerged in 2007, ten years after his resignation from office. It was only in death that Richard Nixon succeeded in rehabilitating himself somewhat. Mr. Ter-Petrossian in his lifetime managed to see hundreds of thousands of Armenians trust him once again.

Among Mr. Ter-Petrossian bid's public supporters were both his longtime loyalists in the Armenian National Movement and those who were and remain in staunch opposition to his policies, such the Defense of Liberated Territories group.

The second victory was in redefining the political field in Armenia. In the May 2007 parliamentary elections, the parties and groups now aligned with Mr. Ter-Petrossian garnered under 15 percent of the vote in the party-line balloting. They were so segmented that only one - the Heritage Party - crossed the 5 percent threshold to get elected to the National Assembly. Mr. Ter-Petrossian himself got more than 22 percent of the vote in the February 2008 presidential election and, although narrowly, he was the first runner-up. With that, he and his allies now emerged as the first alternative to the current governing alliance.

More importantly, however, the unstable post-election situation created under his leadership helped push the other alternative parties - the nominally social-democratic Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the populist Country of Laws Party - to identify with the governing circle. Whether this was a necessary or wise move for them is a subject for another time.

One thing is clear, however: the political field became polarized between two alternatives, and both alternatives espouse basically the same social, economic, and foreign policy. (Mr. Ter-Petrossian campaigned in favor of less corruption, a level playing field, adherence to the law, and active efforts to improve relations with all of Armenia's neighbors. So did the new president, Serge Sargsian, however. The choice voters faced was not between stated policies but between individuals, their teams, and their trustworthiness.)

Failure

If Mr. Ter-Petrossian was successful to a degree in rehabilitating himself, emerging as the main alternative, and (together with former president Robert Kocharian and Mr. Sargsian) defining politics as the choice between individuals, not platforms, he failed, of course, in his primary goal: to become Armenia's president again or - stated otherwise - to prevent Mr. Sargsian from becoming president.

True, things can change. But in his failure to stop Mr. Sargsian, Mr. Ter-Petrossian has suffered an enormous new blow to his personal credibility.

This collapse has been evident in the weeks that have elapsed since the expiration of the 20-day state of emergency declared on March 1. On April 9, Inauguration Day, Mr. Ter-Petrossian's movement called on people to mark the 40th day after the March 1 deaths by lighting candles at Miasnikian Square - the site of the March 1 rally that drew over a hundred thousand participants. Only a few hundred people showed up on April 9.

The campaign meanwhile called on people to disrupt festivities at Republic Square at 9:30 the same evening. Tellingly, the announcement urged supporters to shout slogans against Mr. Sargsian and Mr. Kocharian but to avoid shouting, "Levon, Levon." The explanation was an acknowledgement that many people avoided the opposition rallies because they revile Mr. Ter-Petrossian personally. All the same, few people showed up for the disruption and the festivities proceeded as planned.

Attendance at the first sanctioned opposition demonstration, held in mid-April, was also low by late February standards: 3,000 by some counts, 7,000 by the count of the organizers.

And then came April 24. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians made the pilgrimage to the Armenian Genocide memorial at Tzitzernakaberd. Only about 2,000 of them chose to follow Mr. Ter-Petrossian to that hallowed site and from there to a rally in central Yerevan.

Why this collapse of visible support?

In his election campaign and in the post-election movement, Mr. Ter-Petrossian inspired belief that major business owners, government officials, and the police and armed forces would flock to his side. After all, many government officials got their start under him. To take a very important example, five of the nine members of the Constitutional Court were appointed to the court by him, and the court is the final arbiter of the election results. Wooing, urging, warning, confronting, cajoling members of these groups, he led people to believe that he could win and he could take office.

It turned out that he couldn't. And now the question has become: "We followed you and what do we have to show for it? Ten dead Armenians, our international standing weakened, and more-or-less the same administration we would have had without your intervention. Thanks a lot."