Outside Observers Validate Armenian Election

The outside world wrinkled its nose but gave this nation’s latest tainted presidential election a reasonably clean bill of health Wednesday, when the American who heads an international observer mission called the vote a “step toward . . . a functioning democracy.”

This verdict means that Robert Kocharyan--the tough young technocrat who is the Armenian president-elect--can expect Western aid and trade to continue after his inauguration next week. This will occur despite allegations of cheating at the polls Monday and preelection warnings from the West that this little ex-Soviet state would have its foreign funding cut if it did not hold a fair vote.

Among the “irregularities” noted by Sam Brown, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s 140-member observer team, were “forged voter signatures, clearly substantiated instances of ballot-box stuffing and, in several polling stations, extraordinarily high turnout [that] raised questions about the integrity of the process in those locations.”

“These shortcomings do not cause us to question [the election’s] outcome,” Brown told a news conference here, though he added that in several instances, “there is sufficient indication of vote fraud to require further investigation and possible criminal charges.”

Disgruntled election observers who did not want to be identified by name described violations they had witnessed that had swung voting in Kocharyan’s favor and complained that the OSCE position--reached only after a long day of what one called “frank” talks--had whitewashed a darker reality. But their off-the-record comments had no impact.

“I don’t think this election will affect our aid,” said a U.S. official.

U.S. aid alone has added up to $1 billion for Armenia since its independence in 1991; this makes Armenia the third-biggest recipient of American largess in per capita terms after Israel and, more recently, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Complete election results will be released today. By Wednesday, with all votes counted, the Central Electoral Commission said Kocharyan had won 59.33% to 40.67% for his rival, Karen S. Demirchyan--formerly Armenia’s Communist boss.

Demirchyan spokesman Armen Khachataryan said, “The vote was neither free nor fair,” but he added that his boss would not use violence to back his claim that the election was stolen. By contrast, after a 1996 election that was first blessed by the West but then labeled “flawed,” former President Levon A. Ter-Petrosyan used tanks to frighten angry crowds back to their homes.

The streets Wednesday were calm. Although many people agreed that the vote was not completely honest, they blamed the remnants of an authoritarian system for any cheating. Few accused Kocharyan, and many felt he would have won anyway, without the help of crooked officials or the threatening presence at polling stations of men from the defense or interior ministries.

“I’m satisfied,” said political analyst Boris Navarsadyan. “Even if there were some infringements, the substantial result is really fair. Kocharyan may not have won by 60%, but most people now feel they have really elected a president--a feeling we haven’t had for two years.”

In his previous jobs as prime minister and--since Ter-Petrosyan resigned in February--acting president, Kocharyan, 43, proved to be a forward-looking economic reformer and administrator. He brought in young, market-minded ministers and dispersed the cronies who had surrounded his predecessor.

He promised during his campaign to cancel the mistakes of the unpopular Ter-Petrosyan. He wants to give back some of the powers that Ter-Petrosyan took from parliament. He has pledged to stamp out corruption and force businesspeople close to his predecessor to pay taxes.

But it is not yet clear whether he will simply substitute a new elite of his own cronies for the old. Like Ter-Petrosyan--at least until the ex-president started making unpopular suggestions that Armenians in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh knuckle under to neighboring Azerbaijan, their enemy in a 10-year conflict--Kocharyan is backed by Vazgen Sarkisyan, the powerful defense minister.

Whether he can or wants to check the power of this hulking, bearded figure--the behind-the-scenes strongman of Armenian politics--remains to be seen.

With much of the crossover between business and crime located in top military circles, cleaning up corruption would mean cutting into Sarkisyan’s fiefdom. Instead, one of Kocharyan’s election vows was to increase army spending, something diplomats have played down as “probably” campaign rhetoric.

U.S. policy in the Caucasus region south of Russia is twofold: to support both democratic institutions and free markets. More specifically, U.S. officials want free access to vast oil deposits in Azerbaijan, where major American oil firms have invested.

To safeguard that access, the West must stop the wars along oil transport routes, conflicts that have plagued the region since before the Soviet collapse. The oldest is in Nagorno-Karabakh, where fighting has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands; there have been slow mediation efforts there led by an American-Russian-French OSCE team known as the Minsk Group.

Kocharyan’s policy on this disputed region is tougher than that of his predecessor. A native of Nagorno-Karabakh and, until last year, the region’s president, he rejects the compromises pushed by Ter-Petrosyan. His election in Armenia means that the peace process will probably be deadlocked in coming months. But, as one diplomat said dismissively, “It’s been deadlocked for three years anyway.”

Despite his hard-line stance on the regional strife, the dynamic Kocharyan fits overall Western policy priorities better than Demirchyan, a figure from the Soviet past whose mysterious reemergence in politics after 10 years in the shadows caused speculation about whether Moscow was backing him.

Demirchyan personified a secure past for Armenia’s nostalgic have-nots. But his program was vague, and his ability, or wish, to distance himself from the governing style of what U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott calls the “stultifying and repressive Soviet Communist system” was in doubt.

Still, there was ambivalence in Wednesday’s calm. Asked whether he was glad that Kocharyan--for whom he voted--had won, unemployed Karen Nadzharyan said: “I worry about his dictatorial tendencies. Let’s wait and see.”