The re-entry of former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan into Armenian politics has the propensity to complicate the so-far smooth implementation of the presidential succession scheme laid out by the current President Robert Kocharyan and Prime Minister Serzh Sarkissian. After eight years marked by a high degree of continuity, and key contradictions were addressed quietly within the ruling elite, Armenia may be heading into a period of higher volatility and, perhaps, also higher transparency.

BACKGROUND: Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the first President of post-Soviet independent Armenia, left his post in February 1998 under pressure from his ministers led by then Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan. In October 1999, the assassination of Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkissian, parliamentary speaker Karen Demirchyan and several other high officials in the hall of the Armenian National Assembly effectively removed strong political figures that could challenge the new political elite from Karabakh, embodied by President Kocharyan and then Defense Minister Serzh Sarkissian.

Following his ouster, Ter-Petrosyan kept a low profile and stayed out of active politics until his rather surprising re-emergence on September 21 this year, when he hosted a reception at the Marriott-Armenia Hotel dedicated to the sixteenth anniversary of Armenia’s independence. During this reception, Ter-Petrosyan compared the “invisible crisis” of Armenia to the one of the USSR before it fell apart. He accused the authorities of being “corrupt and criminal” and abusing the “courts [which] exist only to conceal the authorities’ crimes”. He singled out the lack of progress on the Mountainous Karabakh conflict as the most serious failure of the current leadership, one which holds Armenia’s development back and has the propensity to endanger Armenia’s territorial integrity in the future.

On October 26, Ter-Petrosyan participated in the largest rally in years, organized to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the October 1999 killings in the Parliament. Ter-Petrosyan appeared together with two radical opposition leaders: Aram Sarkissian, head of the “Republic” party and brother of the assassinated Vazgen Sarkissian, and Stepan Demirchyan, head of the People’s Party and son of the assassinated Karen Demirchyan. Some 20,000 people attended the rally.

In his hour-and-half speech, Ter-Petrosyan announced his intention to stand for president in the spring 2008 elections. According to him, he was not sure whether to put forward his candidacy, but the events of 23 October, when the police detained several of his supporters as they urged Yerevan residents to participate in the rally planned for 26 October, compelled him to react.

Ter-Petrosyan also mentioned that the current document on settlement of the Mountainous Karabakh conflict, which is being discussed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, is nothing else than the step-by-step proposal rejected by the very same leadership ten years ago. He also proposed a return to the previous negotiating format, in which Mountainous Karabakh was also represented at the negotiating table. He also rhetorically asked whether Armenia can afford to be kept out of all important regional projects.

Ter-Petrosyan accused a number of top public officials, such as President Kocharyan, Prime Minister Sarkissian, Deputy Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian and the Head of the Presidental Administration Armen Gevorgyan, and some others, of being a part of criminal system that tightly controls the security apparatus, the judicial system and the electronic media and creates an “atmosphere of fear”. He stated that his main aim is to bring about a radical change in the “destructive course of the current Armenian authorities” and “prevent the reproduction of the current criminal regime”.

In a meeting with journalists in Kapan, in the Syunik region, which preceded Ter-Petrosyan charges against the government, President Kocharyan stressed that Ter-Petrosyan’s Armenian National Movement “bears responsibility for the destruction of the Armenian economy” and that they had left a “bad legacy”. Other politicians, such as Tigran Torosyan, speaker of the National Assembly and Deputy Chair of the Republican Party, were more cautious in judging the ANM legacy. Serzh Sarkissian, who has held several key government positions during Ter-Petrosyan’s presidency including as Defense Minister in 1993-95 and as Minister of Interior and National Security between 1996 and 1999, did not comment on Ter-Petrosyan’s return to active politics.

IMPLICATIONS: Until Ter-Petrosyan’s comeback on the political scene, the future internal political development in Armenia looked relatively predictable. On April 4, 2007, following the unexpected death of then Prime Minister Andranik Markarian, the President appointed then Defense Minister Serzh Sarkissian as Prime Minister. A few weeks later, the Republican Party of Armenia, chaired by Sarkissian, comfortably won the May 2007 parliamentary elections, resulting in his re-appointment. The Republican party congress scheduled for November 10 is expected to formally nominate Sarkissian as the party’s presidential candidate. It was widely accepted that President Kocharyan, who is barred from contesting the elections as he has been in power for two consecutive terms, was preparing the ground for Sarkissian to succeed him as president. Kocharyan himself would then according to general opinion become Prime Minister. This arrangement would prolong the control of the Karabakh elite and their supporters over politics, most businesses and media outlets.

These purported succession plans now seem to be challenged by Ter-Petrosyan, probably the only political figure that could possibly command enough popular support to seriously contend the presidential polls.

Ter-Petrosyan and his supporters are nevertheless facing an uphill battle, and getting through to the public with their message will not be easy. Practically all TV stations are under the control of the government or businessmen close to the government, while comparably more independent newspapers and radio stations are far less influential than TV. There are already some signs of the regime clamping down on non-loyal media outlets. On October 23, tax officials raided the offices of the Gyumri-based Gala TV station, which broadcasted Ter-Petrosyan’s speech of September 21. Gala TV’s owner, Vahan Khachatrian, reportedly claimed that officers of the Gyumri branch of the National Security Service visited him shortly afterwards and warned him to stop covering Ter-Petrosyan’s political activities.

It seems unlikely that Ter-Petrosyan will be able to command enough financial and human resources to reverse the ruling elite’s succession plans. However, absent a dramatic clampdown on his campaign, the current authorities will find it very hard to avoid the crucial and dramatic questions that the former president is asking about Armenia’s political life and the country’s future.

The consolidated, one might say even clannish, nature of the Armenian politics has, so far, kept the discussion on the essentials of country’s political orientation and ongoing management confined to the fringes of the political spectrum, or to the boardrooms of the ruling elite. Two key issues of symbolic significance – the lingering Mountainous Karabakh conflict and the issue of the recognition of the 1915 massacres of the Armenian population in the Ottoman empire as Genocide – have so far overshadowed other political issues. At the same time, some political forces were asking why Armenia does not take part in regional development projects. Moreover, the unconditional dependence on Russia’s military and economic support have been put in question. Currently, Ter-Petrosyan is lending an influential voice to all of those issues being raised and discussed.

Ordinary Armenians might be rather responsive to some of these concerns. Russia’s Gazprom in April 2006 hiked gas prices to US$110 from the previous US$56 per thousand cubic meters. To keep the price from growing to US$235, President Kocharyan had to hand over the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline and a part of the Hrazdan thermo-electric plant to Russia. The implications of Russia’s regional policy have also been damaging – the transport embargo that Moscow imposed on Georgia in July 2006 dealt a heavy blow to the Armenian economy.

Should Ter-Petrosyan make these issues a cornerstone of his campaign, the authorities might have to answer some tough questions. In the end, however, Armenia is likely to benefit from a more open debate and the opening up of its notoriously obscure political circles.

CONCLUSIONS: The return of Levon Ter-Petrosyan to Armenia’s politics is a promising development in terms of generating a more lively debate on the country’s present and future policies. Although Ter-Petrosyan might become a weighty challenger in the presidential campaign, his personal, financial and human resources seem insufficient for actually winning the elections. Moreover, the authorities possess an array of levers – control of the media, intimidation of opposition sympathizers in the provinces, use of ‘administrative resource’ and of the external threat (Turkey and/or Azerbaijan) to rally the nation around its own flags. Overall, Armenian politics seem firmly set on a path of orderly transition of power from Kocharyan to Sargsyan, and Ter-Petrosyan would have to engineer a major feat to prevent this seemingly inevitable scenario.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Dr. Blanka Hancilova is an analyst of international relations with a focus on the former Soviet Union, and the co-founder of APRECO Group. Olga Azatyan is an analyst with the APRECO Group.