"GEOPOLITICAL TURMOIL"

There are a number of refe-rence points for assessing the domestic political situation in a country and media analysis is one of the most reliable. Words and, much more rarely, photographs are the focal point of attention in this analysis, for obvious reasons. It has to be said that proper attention is not always given to cartoons, but a sketch that appeared in "Golos Armenii" ["Voice of Armenia"] recently was worthy of interest: it showed a broom with a rifle-butt at the end and a pile of spent cartridges instead of rubbish. The article that was illustrated so graphically was all about the latest political developments in Armenia. However, bearing in mind the country's traditions of political terror, this sort of angle, which is certainly no laughing matter, is perfectly understandable, especially as political tension inside Armenia continues to grow.

Back in the summer, the Armenian opposition, operating in a foursome - Levon Ter-Petrosyan's Armenian National Congress (ANC), Raffi Hovannisian's Heritage Party, Prosperous Armenia (PPA), led by "vodka oligarch" Gagik Tsarukyan (former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan was also a member of this party) and ARF-Dashnaktsutyun - published their demands on the government. Contrary to expectations (and past practice) the president's resignation was not one of them. The opposition put forward purely social demands: to restart the Nairit plant, not to privatize the Vorotan Hydro Cascade, to cancel the compulsory accumulative pension system and return all deductions to citizens since the beginning of the year, to review the current huge penalties for traffic offences, double the amount of loans for farmers, and so on.  They have given the authorities until September to fulfil all these demands. This is a failsafe move: if the demands are fulfilled, the opposition gets the dividends; if not - it will be the government's responsibility. Then the two opposition factions in the Armenian parliament - the Armenian National Congress and the Heritage Party - as well as the Prosperous Armenia (PPA) faction, which describes itself as an alternative to the government, issued a statement accusing the country's leaders of failing to meet their 12 demands.

For his part, the speaker of the National Assembly (parliament), deputy chairman of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, Galust Sahakyan, said that although the parliamentary opposition had refused to hold talks, the government still intended to continue working in this direction. Earlier, Sahakyan held a conference on the question of the opposition's 12 demands, involving representatives of all factions. The meeting took place on the back of a statement by Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan that he was ready to discuss the demands with the opposition and to set up working groups with this in mind. However, the opposition "troika" refused to negotiate, the head of the opposition Armenian National Congress' faction, Levon Zurabyan said: "The parliamentary 'troika' sees no point in the government's offer to discuss the opposition's 12 demands." He said a decision has been taken to form a political council of the nationwide movement and to set up working groups which would deal with organizing rallies and developing cooperation with non-parliamentary political forces, public organizations and the diaspora. 

Experts are loath to predict how events will now develop in Armenia. Zurabyan said a new rally and a march have been arranged for 10 December. However, there are firm rumours that Prosperous Armenia and Gagik Tsarukyan are against this plan, which has been initiated by Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Besides, Tsarukyan is clearly aspiring to the role of single leader of the opposition front, but Ter-Petrosyan has no intention of giving way to him, not to mention the fact that Raffi Hovhannisyan is clearly playing his own game…

The familiar "surfeit of leaders" syndrome has clearly begun among the Armenian opposition. The broad opposition movements, as a rule, are the strongest to "cement" disfavour with the government, and if they eventually succeed in bringing down the hated regime there will immediately be a split in their ranks. But the Yerevan opposition has already started to "crumble" - first it was the Dashnaks who broke away, and now it is the PPA that is going its own way… In short, it is all "confusion and wavering". And the foreign political preferences of the opposition leaders or, to be more precise, their desire to win the support of external forces, are, by all accounts, having quite an important influence on this process.  While some are placing their stakes on Russia, others are looking to the West. And, most importantly, they are counting on this external support playing a decisive role in the event of the inevitable bankruptcy of the authorities.

At the rally in Yerevan in October it was clear that the ANC leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who quite recently had aspirations of becoming the leader of the pro-western forces, now, following Armenia's entry into the Eurasian Union, is openly building bridges with Russia so that there, at least, they will not stand in the way of his efforts to come to power in Armenia. It was there on the rally platform that he said that the republic's entry into the EAEU was irreversible and any twitchiness over this was not only too late but dangerous, and Ukraine was an example of this. Even the West, he said, understands Yerevan's choice, but a group of people inside Armenia is trying to provoke anti-Russian emotions, but there are no grounds for so doing. Raffi Hovhannisyan immediately opposed the EAEU, sending a predictable message to the West: he was prepared to be a guarantor of "European integration" if they shared "Orange technology" with him, helped to organize a local "Maidan", treated him to cookies and swept him to power.   

Lastly, Prosperous Armenia is also waging its own policy, with the obvious accent on Russia, except that the central figure here is not Gagik Tsarukyan, but former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan. He continues to desist from loud rallying slogans, but by all appearances is playing his own game, remaining Serzh Sargsyan's most dangerous opponent, not from the rally platform but as a political conspirator. And not just in Yerevan's corridors of power, where he has plenty of potential supporters, but also in Moscow, where they have clearly not left out of account the fact that the incumbent government in Armenia, while talking about joining the EAEU, nevertheless continues to seek contacts with the European Union. Armenia, we recall, is still a member of the "Eastern Partnership" and is not even suspending relations with NATO, even though Russia has urged its allies in the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization] to do so.

One could think of dozens of options that Yerevan would anticipate achieving by trying to "stick with both sides". It is quite possible that Serzh Sargsyan is simply afraid of sharing the same fate as [ousted Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych. Or, against all the odds, he is still counting on getting financial help from the EU. However, in the context of a worsening of relations between Russia and the West, such "independent behaviour" by Yerevan could seriously annoy Moscow. And it is this displeasure on Russia's part that Robert Kocharyan would appear to still regard as his long-awaited chance of returning to power.