A political sensation occurred in Armenia last month: Armenia’s first President, Levon Ter-Petrosian, who leads the radical opposition to the current administration, announced he was going to run in the Yerevan mayor elections scheduled for May 31.

This is extraordinary as Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, houses almost 40 percent of the country’s population and more than half of its economic potential. The May elections of Yerevan’s mayor will be the first in 15 years. According to the first Constitution of independent Armenia adopted in 1995, the city of Yerevan had the status of a region (marz) and its mayor, like the governors of the other 10 regions of the country, were appointed by the President or by the Prime Minister. In this way, Levon Ter-Petrosian, who was the President in 1995, hoped to avoid the emergence of a strong competitor to the national government (a “second president”) in the mayor’s office.

Yerevan was given the status of a community after the amendments to the Constitution made in November 2005, bringing with it the necessity of electing a mayor. To avoid the emergence of a "second President," the current ruling elite of Armenia agreed on the following indirect mechanism for the mayoral election. First, the Municipal Council (named Council of Elders), is elected, and this body is to elect the mayor. The 65-seat Council of Elders is to be elected through vote by party lists (proportional vote), and the number one candidate on each list will be the candidate for mayor from that particular party. The ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) led by current President Serzh Sargsyan believed that this mechanism would enable it to place the desired person in the mayor’s office, given the overwhelming majority it has in the National Assembly and in the government. The RPA thus announced in advance its intention to run in the elections on an individual list, without cooperating with the members of the current four-party government coalition. Moreover, on March 4, Sargsyan appointed a RPA member, Gagik Beglarian, Yerevan mayor, who will be the last mayor to take office this way, and a few days later Beglarian was announced the number one candidate on the RPA’s electoral list. Thus Beglarian was given the opportunity to use “administrative resources” in his favor well before the official campaign starts in May.

In this situation, the Armenian National Congress (ANC), the alliance of 18 radical opposition parties led by Ter-Petrosian, announced that its electoral list would be headed by the former President, thus turning the municipal elections into, effectively, a second round of last year's presidential vote. During the vote of February 19, 2008, Sargsyan officially received 52% of votes while Ter-Petrosian, whose official votes were 22%, also claimed victory, a conflict which eventually led to the deadly clashes on March 1, 2008.

By presenting a list headed by the former President, the ANC managed to turn the Yerevan Council of Elders vote from a community event into one on a national scale. The public tension caused by last year’s events is still high and moreover, the support enjoyed by Ter-Petrosian in the capital is stronger than in the countryside. According to preliminary estimates, the lists of the RPA and the ANC could win 40% of votes each during the ballot. If this happens, the Mayor will be elected through deals with smaller party factions (a total of six parties are running for the May 31 elections).

What is more important, the May election campaign offers the ANC a legal opportunity to continue its political campaigning against the current regime, and the authorities will have no grounds to ban ANC rallies and block it from TV, as they have done constantly since March 2008. On the other hand, the authorities will do their best to downplay the strength of the ANC and, especially, prevent its candidate from winning, as it is obvious that a political figure of Ter-Petrosian’s significance enters the campaign not for a desire to improve Yerevan’s garbage disposal but in order to use the Mayoral elections as a launching pad for reaching the political goals he declared last year. The former President keeps promising that he strives to destroy the current “robbery” system, as he characterizes it. These events make likely the emergence of new tension in Armenia’s political life of in May.