CDA RAISES DEMOCRACY PROGRAM CONCERNS WITH PRIME

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 YEREVAN 001448 SIPDIS C O R R E C T E D C O P Y (PARA 4, CLASSIFICATION) SIPDIS R FOR BUD JACOBS EUR FOR CARC, PPD, ACE E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/14/2017 TAGS: PREF PHUM PGOV EAID KDEM KPAO AM SUBJECT: CDA RAISES DEMOCRACY PROGRAM CONCERNS WITH PRIME MINISTER YEREVAN 00001448 001.2 OF 003 Classified By: CDA Joseph Pennington, reasons 1.4 (b,d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: CDA and polchief called on the PM December 4 to discuss our ongoing election assistance programs (highlighting IRI plans to conduct an exit poll),raise concern about residence permits for USAID anti-corruption program staff, and to review the Radio Liberty (RL) issue with the PM. The PM expressed enthusiasm for the exit poll idea, and by day's end had released a press statement endorsing the proposal. He professed complete ignorance about the anti-corruption project and the document problems of its staff, but promised to look into it. On Radio Liberty, he expressed broad agreement with the president's hostile views toward the programming, but suggested he saw no need for GOAM action against it. CDA notified the PM of our long-developing plans to fund advertising of RL's new FM frequencies. The PM asked that we consider postponing the ad campaign until after a pending RFE/RL self-audit of its content, slated to be complete by the end of December. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (C) ELECTION ASSISTANCE/COOPERATION: The avowed purpose of our meeting was to present the Prime Minister an updated one-page summary of US election-related training and assistance, which is essentially a carry-over of our assistance program for the May 2007 parliamentary election. CDA mentioned several areas of successful work with the GOAM, such as IFES technical assistance in cleaning up voter registries and providing election poll worker training, NDI political party training, and efforts to increase political involvement of youth and women. The PM affirmed his appreciation for the range of US assistance, and commented that he had publicly promoted several of these projects in the past. ¶3. (C) EXIT POLLING: The key new item to report was the International Republican Institute's (IRI) plan, with USAID funding, to conduct an exit poll for the February presidential election. IRI had asked that we gain explicit buy-in from the GOAM before the exit polling program commenced. CDA told the PM what was being planned, commenting that similar exit polls had been done successfully in such places as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, and could be a useful tool to add to public confidence in an election. He suggested that having independent exit poll data, produced by international experts, to corroborate election results could also be an effective way to debunk bogus opposition claims of fraud, and thereby reduce the risk of public disorder following the election. The PM immediately and warmly embraced the idea, gushing that had we not offered to do it, the government itself would have tried to contract with British or US polling experts to do so. Within hours, the cabinet press office had released a press statement about the CDA's meeting with the prime minister, applauding the exit poll idea. The PM was briefly confused that perhaps the exit polling data would be shared only with political parties -- as had been the case with other types of IRI survey data -- and he said he wanted the exit poll data to be made public right away. (NOTE: Polchief had some weeks before informally foreshadowed the exit poll plan to PM aide Levon Martirosyan, so the PM had had plenty of time to consider his response to the idea. END NOTE) ¶4. (C) THE WOES OF THE MAAC PROJECT: USAID has recently launched its multi-year, multi-million dollar Mobilizing Action Against Corruption (MAAC) project to work with the government and civil society on combating corruption. The new MAAC program is being led by a Canadian citizen chief of party (COP) and a Bulgarian citizen deputy COP, who had been encouraged by the good cooperation they were getting from the GOAM's own anti-corruption secretariat. Mysteriously, however, when USAID forwarded the routine paperwork package to the relevant authorities to request residence permits for the COP/DCOP, the request was denied without explanation. Further attempts elicited word that the applicants should cease trying, though still no real explanations were offered. The embassy reached out to the MFA for help, and we were subsequently advised that the Passport and Visas Division (OVIR) had been directed that no residence permits should be issued to these two men. He encouraged post to elevate the matter to a higher level. Other back-channel contacts suggested that the National Security Service was responsible for blacklisting the two. ¶5. (C) RAISING MAAC: CDA related briefly the inexplicable difficulties in getting the MAAC staff their residence permits, noting that he hated to bring such a seemingly minor YEREVAN 00001448 002.2 OF 003 matter to the PM, but we had been unsuccessful working through normal channels. He emphasized that the program was not aimed at pointing fingers of blame, but at helping the government and society to address what the prime minister and president had each acknowledged was a serious challenge for Armenia. CDA pointed out that it would be most unfortunate for future headlines to announce that USAID's landmark anti-corruption program in Armenia would be shut down because the government refused to allow the project's leaders to remain in the country. The PM professed complete ignorance not only of the problem but of the program itself, and expressed surprise (and some irritation) that any kind of political directive to OVIR could have been sent without his knowledge. He pointed out that he himself served as Chairman of the Government Anti-Corruption Council, and was therefore surprised to learn that a USAID anti-corruption project was already taking place and he had heard nothing about it. The PM's staff took down the relevant names so he could look into the matter. Several days later, staffer Levon Martirosyan replied to polchief with a short message, "As to these two guys, I am afraid the problem seems to be more serious than we thought and there are no easy solutions at the moment." Shortly thereafter the PM and his key staffers departed for a trip to Brussels and Strasbourg and have been unavailable for further follow-up. ¶6. (C) COMMENT -- A MAAC LESSON LEARNED: The GOAM's anti-corruption organization is oddly set up, and this may have contributed to the PM's feeling blindsided. The GOAM has both a ministerial-level Anti-Corruption Council, which is based in the cabinet and chaired by the Prime Minister, and a full-time, staff-level Anti-Corruption Committee, which is headed by an adviser to the President and based in the Presidency organization. The committee is tasked with drafting the government's anti-corruption strategy, which eventually must be approved by the Council. MAAC has worked closely with the committee chairman, relying on him to keep the other relevant parties informed. It appears that the committee chairman has a poor line of communication to the cabinet. However, MAAC staff members have also worked extensively with the cabinet's legal department head, who reports directly to the PM's chief of staff. So if the PM was left unaware, his own staff is also to blame. That said, Serzh Sargsian has not been prime minister for all that long, and we can believe that the organization may indeed be failing to feed information up the chain as well as they should. END COMMENT ¶7. (C) RADIO LIBERTY -- MAKING THE CASE: CDA also raised with the prime minister the recent spate of invective frompresidential chief of staff Armen Gevorkian about Radio Liberty. CDA reported Gevorkian's all-but-explicit threats to shut down RL broadcasts in Armenia. He commented that this would be a seriously negative indicator in the run-up to the February presidential election He pointed out that Sargsian himself would be the chief victim of this negative political fallout, as Sargsian is the ruling party's presidential candidate and therefore the presumed beneficiary of an act to muzzle opposition media, whereas President Kocharian is set to retire. CDA reminded that -- though it was funded by Congress -- RL has a completely independent management and board of governors, and its editorial policy is outside the control of the Embassy or the State Department. He noted that he had conveyed Gevorkian's concerns to RFE/RL management, which was undertaking a detailed audit of RL content during the month of December. ¶8. (C) THE PM'S REPLY ON RL: Sargsian complained that the GOAM had raised concerns for a year about RL's editorial bias -- specifically, that the RL Armenia Service director is committed to promoting a partisan agenda -- but that nothing had been done to correct the problem. At the same time, the PM said, "I personally am not much concerned" about RL, adding that RL had shown the same kind of bias during the parliamentary election season, and had had no significant effect on the outcome. He expressed confidence that RL would be similarly ineffective in promoting its political agenda during the presidential election. In what seemed an example of talking points coordinated with the presidency, he commented that "commitments must be observed, not just unilaterally." (Comment: the PM was echoing Gevorkian's earlier (specious) suggestion that the embassy or RL had earlier this year made some kind of commitment to the GOAM about RL's editorial content. End comment.) CDA replied that the PM had CDA's commitment to ensure that the GOAM's concerns were conveyed fully and frankly to top RFE/RL management, as had been done already, and that he was YEREVAN 00001448 003.2 OF 003 confident that RFE/RL's ongoing internal audit would determine if anything was amiss with RL's programming. ¶9. (C) ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN FOR RL: CDA then raised the issue of our plan to advertise RL's switch (which happened September 1) from public radio to the private radio stations that now carry its broadcasts. He emphasized that efforts to develop the $80,000 campaign had begun in late summer when it had become clear to us that RL would change networks, but (USG) bureaucratic processes meant that the money was only now available. CDA said the current proposal was not a reaction to the latest round of RL criticism from the GOAM, but was intended to let the audience know where they could find RL programming now that it is no longer on the public radio network.. Seeming nonplussed, the PM eventually said it would be good if the ad campaign could be delayed until after the RFE/RL content audit. CDA responded that we would consider delaying until then, and that we would get back to the PM's staff (Comment: The timing issue may now be moot, as we understand the funding for the ad campaign has been delayed and may not be available until February. End comment). ¶10. (C) COMMENT: The meeting was striking in that the three democracy agenda items got such different responses: warm on exit polls, neutral on the MAAC problems, and cold on Radio Liberty. We are inclined from the PM's and his staff's reactions to believe that they were genuinely unaware of the MAAC issue. On RL, the coordination with the presidency was clear. Sargsian seemed to check himself mid-stream in his anti-RL complaints, adopting an above-the-fray demeanor. Subsequent events (septel) have made clear that the president and PM are on very different pages regarding exit polls. We grow more persuaded that the president and the prime minister, and their respective institutions, are now operating quite independently from each other. There is mounting evidence that communications between the two have broken down significantly, especially on issues of political strategy. PENNINGTON