HOW TO DEPICT DEMOCRACY WHEN IT'S NOT THERE

Parliamentary elections are to be held in Armenia on 6 May. The stage of nominating and registering candidates has already been completed. Parties and election associations are announcing their pre-election platforms, preparing for debates, staging rallies and mobilizing their supporters. The Armenian authorities in the shape of President Serzh Sargsyan and his team face a difficult choice. The situation which has resulted from their dilettantish policy and their anything-goes attitude to the corrupt and criminal oligarchy fed by the authorities has become hopeless. Armenians are leaving the country in their tens of thousands in search of a better life. The economy will never recover from the crisis of 2008 and is stagnating. The standard of living of the population is falling. There is nothing to put in the budget. The only thing to hope for, as ever, is foreign aid. But the problem for the ruling elite is that if the elections fail to meet democratic criteria, no-one will give them any money. And so Serzh Sargsyan and his closest circle are racking their brains over this tough task even for the sophisticated Armenians: how do you depict democracy when it isn't there?

The Armenian parliament is formed according to a mixed electoral system and consists of 131 deputies, 41 of whom are single-seat candidates. According to the country's new electoral legislation, one in six candidates must be a woman. The last parliamentary elections in Armenia were in May 2007. Five parties made it into parliament and three of them - the Armenian Republican Party (RPA), the Prosperous Armenia Party (PA) and Orinats Yerkir - formed a ruling coalition. The ARF Dashnaktsutyun, after several years in the ruling coalition, left it and over the past two years, like the Heritage Party, has been in opposition. RPA has a majority in parliament with 63 seats, the PA 26, Orinats Yerkir 8, Dashnaktsutyun 16 and Heritage 7 seats.

The Armenian CEC, as well as the parties represented in parliament (Heritage in tandem with the Free Democrats Party) has registered the voting lists of the main opposition force - the Armenian National Congress (ANC), as well as a number of small parties (the Democratic, Communist and United Armenians Parties). As far as majority constituencies are concerned, 37 candidates have been nominated from the ANC, 33 from the RPA, 15 from the PA, 11 from Orinats Yerkir, 7 from the ARFD and 6 from Heritage. According to local and foreign analysts the main candidates to enter parliament are the ruling RPA and Prosperous Armenia, and also the opposition ANC. Orinats Yerkir, the Heritage-Free Democrats bloc and the ARFD are teetering on the brink of surmounting the electoral barrier which, according to Armenian law, is 5%.

RPA's proportional list was headed by President Serzh Sargsyan, second is the former parliamentary speaker and head of the party's election headquarters, Ovik Abramyan, and third Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisyan. The leaders of a number of political parties and public organizations also made it to the lists.

The RPA is counting on 37-40% of the votes according to the proportional system alone, Eduard Sharmazanov, deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament and RPA's press secretary, said live on Armenian TV's Channel 2. Along with the majority parties the "Republicans" plan to preserve their majority in parliament. Bearing in mind the unlimited by local standards financial potential of Serzh Sargsyan and his close oligarchic hierarchy, as well as their control of the administrative and information levers, the positions of the RPA and its leaders look pretty solid. After all, the RPA is the classic post-Soviet "party of power", a kind of association of bureaucrats, oligarchs and criminals. Of course, the declarations that the party has 150,000 members are inflated. But the party does have several tens of thousands of supporters. Ideologically, the RPA sees itself as a national conservative party. It contains groups orientated towards various "strong figures", including supporters of former president, Robert Kocharyan. But a real minus for the RPA is its public rating, a certain weariness on the part of the public with regard to this party, as well as its inability and reluctance to work with the masses.

At these elections the Prosperous Armenia Party, although officially part of the coalition, is demonstrating a kind of claim towards independence if not downright opposition. Created with the support of the administration of former president Robert Kocharyan, it gives an utterly fantastic number of party members for such a small country of 370,000. In reality, the figure is probably several tens of thousands. The PA has virtually no ideology. It is replaced by broad charity from the personal funds of the party's leader, one of the wealthiest oligarchs in Armenia, president of the National Olympic Committee, Gagik Tsarukyan.  He also heads the PA's electoral list. The whole gang of Tsarukyan's oligarch friends from the world of the literati, leading sportsmen, etc, who feed off him, are represented here.

A stir was caused in Armenia's political swamp by the appearance at number 2 in the PA's list of the former Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan, who had never before been a member of this party. He is well known for being close to Robert Kocharyan and is seen by the Armenian media as someone who in the future is due to steer the PA's parliamentary faction towards serving the former president's political interests. Oskanyan has publicly criticized the incumbent power both in the context of its foreign policy and in the economy. His hands are untied from such criticism because he did not participate in the government of recent years and, unlike other members of the PA, does not bear responsibility for the unflattering results of its work. However, disagreement from the Prosperous Armenia Party cannot conceal the fact that this opposition is a political-technical trick aimed at drawing votes from the electorate, and after the elections to sell his support more dearly to the RPA and President Serzh Sargsyan.

The real opposition to the incumbent regime comes from the Armenian National Congress. It is a public-political association of 18 political parties, a few dozen public organizations and thousands of members who joined the ANC directly, bypassing the party structures. The leading forces in the ANC are the Armenian National Movement (ANM), the Respublika Party and the People's Party of Armenia (PPA). Of course, leadership in the ANC belongs to former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, and its coordinator is his old assistant, Levon Zurabyan. Although the ANC does not precisely set its foreign political orientation, according to public opinion in Armenia and in the world it is regarded more as being pro-western.

Levon Ter-Petrosyan, while not denying the need for compromise over the question of settling the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, criticises the Madrid Principles, claiming that the second plan of the Minsk Group, which he accepted and because of this was removed from power, was better. Supporting in general the idea of a normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations, the ANC leader opposes those clauses of the Zurich Protocols which assume the creation of an Armenian-Turkish commission on historical questions. But the fire of the ANC's criticism and that of Ter-Petrosyan is mainly concentrated on the crimes, corruption and mediocrity of the incumbent power and those who personify it. At rallies attended by thousands of people he has been calling for the dismantling of the existing regime, the restoration of constitutional legality and respect for citizens' rights and freedoms. At the same time, Ter-Petrosyan states that without a normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani and Armenian-Turkish relations, which presupposes a breakthrough in a Karabakh settlement, Armenia is incapable of overcoming the economic crisis and taking the line of steady development.

The ARF Dashnaktsutyun, Armenia's oldest traditional party, stands out among the political forces of the middle ground. It possesses substantial financial potential and has influence on some TV channels, radio stations, internet websites and news agencies. However, in the opinion of many Armenian and foreign analysts, the ARFD's chances of surmounting the 5% electoral barrier are, like the Heritage-Free Democrats bloc, rather shaky. It is significant that at the last elections to the Council of Elders of Yerevan the ARFD was unable to overcome this barrier. As far as Orinats Yerkir is concerned, the general opinion is that this party will not be in a position to enter parliament by itself and only the RPA and the authorities will be able to drag it in for their own purposes.

In the time remaining until the elections the game of political patience in Armenia is unlikely to change very much, especially as there is apathy and pessimism among broad sections of the population. John Heffern, US ambassador to Armenia, recently stated that according to an opinion poll of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), only 12% of Armenia's citizens believe that normal parliamentary elections will be held in the country, and he expressed surprise how people could vote with such an attitude  to the elections.  In response, Agaron Adibekyan, head of the Sotsiometr sociological centre, criticised the US ambassador's statement and produced his own data which said that only 29.9% of the respondents believe that there would be serious violations at the elections which could influence their outcome, and another 27.3% expect slight infringements which would not affect the final results. He stressed that, according to his sociological poll, only 10.6% were prepared to "sell" their vote. Clearly, because his range of vision is geographically restricted, Adibekyan believes his figures are positive because the very fact that one in ten voters openly expresses their readiness to "sell their vote" (but how many were too ashamed to admit that?!) eloquently illustrates the degree of "democracy" in Armenia and its coming elections.

A significant number of Armenians are expressing their attitude to the regime, the elections and their country's prospects not with their hands but, so to speak, with their feet. The Migration Service has recorded that in the first quarter of this year alone the number of people leaving the country exceeded the numbers of those coming in by 25,000. This negative balance has been increasing in recent years. In 2008 the figure was 23,000, in 2009 - 25,000, in 2010 - 46,000 and in 2011 - 43,820. However, following the publication of the voting lists, it turned out that 2,485,844 citizens have the right to vote in Armenian today. Compared with the 2008 presidential elections this figure has increased by 170,000, which raises great doubts among experts. According to their assessments, the population of Armenia is currently not more than 2.5 - 2.6 million, and 2.3 million live here permanently. Consequently, the real figure of the number of voters has been exceeded by 650-670,000, and this is down to the manipulation and falsification of the authorities. It is not surprising that all the parties taking part in the elections, with the exception of the ruling coalition, have demanded that precise lists of voters be presented, from which they demand that that the "dead souls" and those who are not currently resident in the country be excluded.

Serzh Sargsyan and his team are dead set on simulating "democratic elections" in order to get encouragement from the West in the form of additional financial aid, but at the same time they make no secret of the fact that they will not surrender power under any circumstances. This was vividly demonstrated by the hasty adoption of the law "On the legal regime of a state of emergency", which allows for the use of the armed forces to impose order if a state of emergency is declared. In this connection,

Nikol Pashinyan, one of the ANC's functionaries, the editor of an opposition newspaper and not long ago a political prisoner, justifiably pointed out that if Serzh Sargsyan really did want to hold free and fair elections, then he would have initiated not this law which, in essence, is a guideline for the dispersal of rallies, but, for example, a law on applying ink stains to the fingers of voters, and so on. Then there would be no need to declare a state of emergency, never mind preventing mass disturbances.

Whatever happens, preparations for the elections in Armenia will run their course. There are unlikely to be any fundamental changes afterwards that would lead to a regime change. However, how crudely the authorities will force through a result acceptable to themselves will be of significance to Armenia and also for the configuration of power and how the hierarchy aligns itself to the relations between those who personify it. Thus, if the Prosperous Armenia Party increases its representation in parliament, the ARFD comes in, and the RPA includes the rather furtive supporters of ex-president Robert Kocharyan, then it is anticipated that he will directly and rigorously raise the question of his premiership in the government. Otherwise the PA and the ARFD may refuse to support the RPA and become a political platform for Robert Kocharyan at the 2013 presidential elections. In such a situation it is not ruled out that the ANC, headed by Ter-Petrosyan, might enter into an ad-hoc alliance with Serzh Sargsyan simply in order to prevent Kocharyan returning to power.

The nuances in the configuration of the political positions in the future parliament will also depend on whether the representatives of Orinats Yerkir and the Heritage-Free Democrats bloc make it. As mentioned earlier, they will not get into parliament without Serzh Sargsyan's help, and, consequently, that is whom they will support.  The situation will become clearer after 6 May when the results of the ballot will be declared. The Armenian "political reptile house" may yet throw up even more surprises.