SIMMERING POST-ELECTION DISCONTENT IN ARMENIA'S

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 YEREVAN 000368 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/CARC E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/29/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM ECON AM SUBJECT: SIMMERING POST-ELECTION DISCONTENT IN ARMENIA'S NORTH REF: A. A) YEREVAN 140 ¶B. B) YEREVAN 364 YEREVAN 00000368 001.2 OF 003 Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Joseph Pennington, reasons 1.4 (b, d). -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (C) Returning to the city where he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 1990s, Poloff got an earful from disenchanted citizens in the northwestern Armenian town of Stepanavan who fret over their bleak economic future. People there bitterly complained of the imminent hike in gas prices that could force many back into poverty, of being "duped" into voting for President Sargsian by his pre-election promises of a higher standard of living, the exodus of youth and able-bodied labor, and the repercussions the price hike could have for Stepanavan's fledgling eco-tourism business. Most of Poloff's interlocutors have relatives who are already overseas and upon whose remittances they depend for survival. Some are considering emigrating themselves if the opportunity arises. END SUMMARY. -------------- WE WERE CHEATED! -------------- ¶2. (C) Ref Adescribed Poloff's pre-election visit to Stepanavan and the difference of opinion on Armenia's presidential candidates, a difference of opinion that has subsequently been replaced with all-round criticism of incoming President Serzh Sargsian. The drastic change of heart has to do with the imminent spike in the price of natural gas that Sargsian's new government announced April 15 (ref B),which could double or triple the price that Armenia's consumers will have to pay to heat their homes and provide cooking energy. "We were cheated!" exclaimed Armine Kalashian, director of Stepanavan's computer center and an employee of the USAID-sponsored Aragak microcredit bank, when describing people's reaction to the price hike announcement. ¶3. (C) Kalashian pointedly noted that many people felt betrayed by Sargsian and his election campaign promises that forecast a higher standard of living for Armenians. Many of them had voted for Sargsian in response to his promises to increase salaries and pensions. With an aging population comprising many pensioners, the fact that then-Prime Minister Sargsian also delivered pensioners a long-overdue increase -- to the tune of 75 percent -- also inspired their vote. But Kalashian said that pensioners are now complaining to her that the price hike in gas will wipe out that increase. She added that recently more than 100 pensioners were dropped from Stepanavan's welfare rolls for budgetary reasons, a move she said caused a great uproar in the city. On the whole, Kalashian said pensioners in Stepananvan felt increasingly abandoned by the government. ¶4. (C) Madlena Sargsian, a librarian at Stepanavan's Agricultural Technicum (agricultural studies university), vented to Poloff that her family had just installed a new gas heating system in their home last winter, and now they may not be able to use it if they cannot afford the new gas prices. (NOTE: Interestingly, even ordinary citizens like Sargsian spoke fluently on the energy economics, worrying to Poloff about the new price for "a thousand cubes (sic)" in reference to the gas measurement being referred to for the price hike. END NOTE.) Sargsian recounted to Poloff how the three-week cold spell last winter -- which saw unusually cold temperatures descend upon Armenia -- broke water and sanitation pipes all around the city (including hers),and that some people who could not afford to fix them still did not have running water in their homes. Like last winter's damage, she said the hike in gas prices, which is expected in early May, would hurt their and other families right away, as Stepanavan's citizens prepared for the summer canning season. She was on the verge of tears trying to visualize how they would survive another frosty winter that now would be complicated by the rise in gas prices. She also told Poloff that her brother, an Armenian military colonel serving at Stepanvan's army base, was currently in Rostov, Russia, collecting Russian pension benefits to supplement his low wages. Sargsian said her brother had Russian citizenship, but did not elaborate on how he acquired it. Other contacts have told us of relatives with similar stories of month-long visits to Russia to collect Russian pension benefits to supplement their embarrassingly low Armenian pensions. YEREVAN 00000368 002.2 OF 003 -------------- -------------- BACK INTO POVERTY, BACK TO CHOPPING DOWN THE FOREST -------------- -------------- ¶5. (C) Kalashian warned that the price spike would force many to give up gas heating entirely next winter and send them back into the nearby forests to chop down wood for fuel. Stepanavan's forests were scarred in the early to mid 1990s when locals as well as Yerevan poachers cut down large swathes of forest to heat homes and supply cooking fuel. Kalashian said the consequences could be "catastrophic" for Stepanavan's nascent eco-tourism business which, according to her, is "Stepanavan's only hope" for economic survival in the long term. ¶6. (C) Zhenya Alaverdian, a Stepanavan homemaker with two daughters living in Moscow, said she never believed any of the campaign promises for a better life, and that Stepanavan had already become an "old folks' home" due to the government's long-standing neglect of Armenia's regions. She and her husband, a tire repairman, said the gas prices would likely send people back into the crushing poverty of the 1990s, when the Karabakh war and energy blockades brought the country to its knees. -------------- EXODUS OF YOUTH, ABLE-BODIED WORKERS -------------- ¶7. (C) Kalashian complained that further economic shocks to Stepanavan could spell the end for the tiny boomlet in construction that it has recently experienced. She said people were having a difficult time finding young or able-bodied workers to help them with their home renovations or shop-building projects. Silva Smbatian, an English teacher from Stepanavan who recently moved to Yerevan to look for work, said the town continues to lose youth searching for jobs in Yerevan, Russia, or other foreign countries. She has two college-age children who said they were dying to leave Stepanavan last year because it had turned into "a dead end" for them. ¶8. (C) Madlena Sargsian and her husband have two children who live in the United States and who last year bought them the USD 30,000 home in downtown Stepanavan. Although they appear better off in their new home, they wondered out loud to Poloff if it "makes sense" to stay in Armenia anymore. In their late fifties and early sixties, the husband and wife complained that none of Armenia's leaders cared about their welfare, and that the only reason they had hung for this long was thanks to the remittances of their children. They make 10,000 and 20,000 Armenian drams per month, respectively (approximately USD 30 and 60). Zhenya Alaverdian and her tire repairman husband depend on the financial support of their daughters who run a jewelry shop in a Moscow suburb. The younger of the daughters, aged 25, just left Stepanavan for good last fall to join her sister there. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶9. (C) Armenia's citizenry in the regions were among those hardest hit by the successive shocks of the 1988 earthquake, 1991 independence from the USSR, and the 1992-94 Karabakh war that overturned their comfortable way of life. As a result, they are a conservative, hardscrabble constituency highly averse to political or economic shocks that threaten their long struggle to get back on their feet. While many of them voted for Sargsian in the hopes that he would help them succeed in that struggle, they now bitterly view the imminent hike in the price of gas as a stab in the back, and a straw that could literally break their economic backs. It is doubtful the price hike will politicize many in Stepanavan, but it will certainly force many people there to ponder moving elsewhere -- within or outside Armenia -- in order to escape the slide back into poverty. END COMMENT. YEREVAN 00000368 003.2 OF 003 PENNINGTON