Realpolitik and Blat

I've been in Armenia for the past few days following the latest disputed presidential election in a small former Soviet republic. The current prime minister, Serzh Sarkisian, has been declared the winner, but the opposition is out on the frozen streets protesting. Sound familiar?

Election observers have spoken of a widespread distrust in the whole electoral process - which is seen by many Armenians as riddled with corruption. My translator, an Armenian business student, gave me some of the background. He told me he really didn't care who became president because he thought the choice was between two equally unattractive prospects: either a continuation of the current regime, or total disruption of the existing order if the opposition won.

He said his parents were currently trying to use their education ministry contacts to secure him a place at a good university, although all the best places have already been bought by those with greater wealth or elite connections. He's also trying to bribe his way out of doing his compulsory military service, which he said could possibly cost more than $10,000 (like all other prices in Armenia, the tariffs for bribing officials have also been rising).

"Look at it from my position," he said. "If the opposition wins and the whole system changes, and all these officials we've been trying to deal with are kicked out, who knows if I'll be able to go to the right university or avoid having to waste my time serving in the army?"

For more views from Armenians on what they want from the future, here are some photo vox-pops we did in the country's two biggest cities, Yerevan and Gyumri. We also did a report about how some Armenians feel about the country's closed borders with its neighbours, Azerbaijan and Turkey, more than a decade after the Nagorno-Karabakh war.

PS. If you're wondering what 'blat' means, read this.

Rebels in London

I've only just noticed this - a review of my recent book about revolutionary youth movements, The Time of the Rebels, from the London magazine Time Out. A particularly incisive comment from the reviewer: "What the main players were doing, or intending to do, is still hotly disputed. We don’t know who won yet, or even who was on which side." Indeed.

Irakli Goes Pop

More on the confluence of pop music and political propaganda... Irakli Okruashvili, the former Georgian defence minister who's wanted on corruption charges and is currently seeking asylum in Paris, has accused the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, of wasting public funds on staging high-budget musical spectaculars in Tbilisi to boost public support for his rule:

"The president is bringing singers - Shakira, Placido Domingo, Gipsy Kings ... and paying millions of dollars for such advertisements, while people are living in poverty," Okruashvili told Reuters news agency today.

The Reuters writer added this rebuttal for balance: "Tbilisi [in other words, the Georgian government] has said private companies paid for the free concert held by Colombian pop diva Shakira last December."

Minister of Style

So Tony Blair wasn't the only prime minister who wanted to be a guitar hero... Thanks to Seda in Yerevan for pointing out Armenian PM and presidential candidate Serzh Sarkisian's personal photo-archive, featuring the skinny young politician as a Soviet-era Lonely Hearts Club Band-style rocker.

The Beat Goes On

Some of Armenia's top pop stars have been singing for their suppers at presidential election campaign rallies. Here are some notes from my column in The Moscow Times; for more images and info on the Armenian campaign circus, see photo-journalist Onnik Krikorian's blog.

As the race for the Armenian presidency heats up, with candidates hurling abuse at each other and gunshots fired outside campaign offices, pop music has emerged as a significant propaganda tool in this increasingly fierce struggle for power. Last week, Serzh Sarkisian, the current prime minister and the favoured candidate of the political establishment, deployed Armenia’s 2008 Eurovision Song Contest hopeful Sirusho (pictured above) as he chased the youth vote.

Sirusho is a winsome but chaste-looking former child star who seems to specialise in romantic ballads with an ethno twist. She’s one of a series of Armenian pop stars who’ve joined the Sarkisian roadshow and publicly declared that they’re down with Serzh. “We have not made that decision forcedly,” one of the politically-committed crooners insisted. “We did that with the call of the heart.”

When it comes to sugar-sweet choruses and faux-R&B grooves, the opposition candidates seem to be lagging behind. However, Levon Ter-Petrosian, the first president of post-Soviet Armenia who recently made a dramatic comeback and is challenging for the top job again, does have a feisty little ringtone available for download from his website, featuring a campaign-trail chant over a breathless house groove. It’s called Struggle, which fits nicely with the clenched-fist campaign logo and Warhol-style portrait on the site, as Ter-Petrosian seeks to portray himself as the righteous avenger riding into town to confront a ruling elite which he has compared to a criminal gang.

Safe Haven for Mira and Marko

Russia has granted political asylum to Slobodan Milosevic's wife and son.

No further comment necessary.