JUDGING ARMENIA'S ELECTIONS - GOOD ENOUGH, BUT

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 YEREVAN 000640 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/15/2017 TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM AM SUBJECT: JUDGING ARMENIA'S ELECTIONS - GOOD ENOUGH, BUT SHOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER REF: A) YEREVAN 608 YEREVAN 00000640 001.2 OF 002 Classified By: CDA A.F. Godfrey, reasons 1.4 (b,d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: We judge Armenia's May 12 election an improvement over previous elections, although this is faint praise. The combined International Election Observation Mission has issued an upbeat preliminary assessment. ODIHR seemed to feel keenly the institutional pressures. If the Europeans grade Armenia a solid "B," we judge that Armenia deserves a "gentleman's C." Our own relatively few accredited embassy observers saw some fairly egregious incidents, which blemish the overall record. Our initial sense is that the cheating and intimidation we witnessed was locally home-grown in various regions, not centrally organized. END SUMMARY -------------- BETTER THAN BEFORE... -------------- ¶2. (C) There is no denying that this election was better than either the presidential or parliamentary elections in 2003, or the constitutional referendum of 2005, all three of which were seriously flawed. Voter turnout, credibly reported at just about sixty percent, was more robust than many expected. Voters clearly were committed to turning out to participate in great numbers. Balloting was orderly and calm in the great majority of polling places. Media access was notably better than before. During the campaign period, we saw a conspicuous increase in the opposition parties and politicians on Armenia's airwaves, including the legislatively-mandated free advertisements, as well as news program coverage and talk show appearances. ¶3. (C) Freedom of Assembly was another success story, and an area where Armenia had had a poor track record. Opposition parties were generally provided fair access to public spaces to hold their political rallies and protests, and were unmolested by authorities. Even the quite strident Impeachment Bloc, with its sharply anti-government rhetoric, was able to rally freely. The movement eventually attracted a noticeable following (perhaps up to about 10,000 people) to its demonstrations. Police kept discreetly well out of sight of most demonstrations. With one fairly minor exception (Ref A),police and demonstrators avoided running afoul of each other. ¶4. (C) Popular attitudes have been difficult to assess, and seem sharply at odds. We have heard from many average Armenians the perception that these elections were a sharp departure from bad past practice, and they think that the polling went well. Intelligentsia are far more likely to be sharply negative, and to accept as valid the many opposition complaints of rampant violations. In a perverse compliment, there have been widespread reports of average voters complaining that they have always before received gifts of cooking oil, rice, flour, or other commodities. ¶5. (C) Central Election Commission Chairman Garegin Azaryan told CDA that recounts have been called in six Territorial Election Commissions (TECs): 5 and 6 in Yerevan, 14 and 15 in Aragotsotn marz, 25 in Kotayk marz, and 33 in Shirak marz. The recounts have been finished in TECs 5 and 6, uncovering no problems, while the remaining four are ongoing. Azaryan said that the recount in TEC 15 has uncovered significant enough problems that he expects a criminal investigation to result. It is encouraging that authorities are taking seriously the need to double-check questionable areas. -------------- ...BUT STILL NOT GREAT -------------- ¶6. (C) With all that said, we had hoped for a better outcome yet. To begin with, the Armenian government entered the election campaign clearly determined to "manage" the perceptions of the international community with regard to these elections, and seems to have done so. The GOAM won an early skirmish when it laid down markers with ODIHR Director Strohal that American citizens were not welcome in the leadership of ODIHR's Election Observation Mission (EOM),and that the numbers of Americans in the EOM overall must be strictly constrained. Thus, where in 2003 we had about 20 U.S. Embassy observers fanned out across the country and we discovered many instances of fraud, in 2007 we had only six, of whom five saw serious problems. To be fair, we had deliberately dispatched our observers to places where we most anticipated problems to take place. YEREVAN 00000640 002.2 OF 002 ¶7. (C) Our emboffs witnessed serious intimidation in a few of the most traditionally notorious areas: Spitak (Lori Marz),Artashat (Ararat Marz),parts of Yerevan, and in Etchmiadzin (Armavir Marz). We saw several polling places that had been effectively taken over by burly thugs representing either the dominant Republican Party or pro-governmental rival Prosperous Armenia. We saw party goons standing at the polling place doors, escorting and standing over voters as they voted (especially the elderly). In one Spitak polling place, Prosperous Armenia thugs shut down operations for nearly an hour. Eventually, a larger band of brawny Republican Party stalwarts faced down the Prosperous Armenia partisans, and assumed control of that station through the count. Our observers, watching the count there, observed the Republicans blatantly steal votes from other parties during the count. ¶11. (C) In a Yerevan polling place, a burly candidate-proxy (representative of a notoriously shady, pro-Republican oligarch, "Nemetz Rubo") flagrantly intimidated voters, other proxies, and polling place workers during the voting day and the vote count. Our observers watched him like a hawk throughout the hours of the count, believing that they had kept the proxy from stealing more than a handful for the Republicans. When official results were posted the next morning, over a hundred votes had been switched from the popular opposition Heritage Party to a minor rival with no chance of winning seats. ¶12. (C) In the town of Artashat (Ararat Marz),the CDA spotted a man in the act of ballot box stuffing. A trusted AID partner twice saw the same thing in Etchmiadzin (Armavir Marz). The same AID partner witnessed a Territorial Election Commission (TEC) chairwoman being "aggressively escorted" from the TEC offices to the local Republican party headquarters at around 11:00pm on election night. She returned to the TEC some while later visibly shaken in her demeanor. TEC members were later overheard outside, horse-trading votes during a smoke break, while the OSCE observers waited upstairs in the TEC office. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶13. (C) ODIHR mission members told us how important it was for the international community to get through the Armenian election with its unanimity intact. That goal has been achieved, but perhaps at the expense of complete objectivity in assessing the poll. Finnish Ambassador Hakala (EU Presidency Troika) told us she was exasperated by the EU statements. Our own stance, more tentative and calling for investigations of allegations of electoral wrongdoing, still seems just right. GODFREY