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Eurasia
February 23, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 22
Armenia’s likely next president has a credibility problem
Carmen Valache in Berlin
Armen Sarkissian, the frontrunner in Armenia's presidential race, has had a busy month ever since the ruling Republican Party (HHK) nominat- ed him as their choice for head of state on Janu- ary 19.
Since then, the former diplomat and prime minis- ter spent four weeks meeting with representatives of Armenian political parties, civil society and diaspora organisations in order to rally support and open up a "national dialogue" before he finally decided to run for the presidency on February 16.
But while Sarkissian has sought to bring together otherwise divided factions, not everyone is happy about his candidacy and questions about his dual nationality and a short-lived stint as prime minis- ter in 1999 continue to loom.
The 64-year-old Sarkissian started his career as
a physics professor at Yerevan State University in 1976, and continued his academic career as a vis- iting scholar at Cambridge University in the 1980s.
In 1992, he was appointed as the ambassador of Armenia to the UK, which was the first of three such tenures he has held over the years (1992- 1995, 1998-2000, 2013-2018). His diplomatic career also included a stint in Brussels where he was Armenia's top representative at the EU, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Nether- lands until 1999.
The only interruption to his diplomatic career was a four-month period between November 1996 and February 1997, when he served as the country's
Armen Sarkissian at the World Economic Forum on Europe and Central Asia in 2008.
fifth prime minister. The official reason for Sark- issian's untimely resignation was the fact that he needed to pursue treatment for a serious illness. However, many speculated that he had stepped down due to disagreements with then defence minister Vazgen Sargsyan; to this day, the issue of his resignation remains shrouded in mystery.
Back in Western Europe, Sarkissian leveraged his connections in Armenia to found a London-based think tank, Eurasia House International (EHI), in 2000, and went on to become a corporate whis- perer of sorts, advising multinationals like Alcatel, BP and Telefonica on investment opportunities in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. In Armenia, he is credited with having brokered several deals between the government and foreign investors, most notably the contract with UK-registered mining company Lydian International
But critics have been quick to point out that Sark- issian's three-decade absence from Armenia makes him poorly equipped to become the next head of state. "He has been removed from the current domestic issues of Armenia, both politi- cal and social. It's difficult to say whether he will be able to overcome this problem, since he was outside of the country for more than 30 years.
He left Soviet Armenia, and now it's a completely different country,” political commentator David Petrosyan opined in an interview with Vestina Kavkaza.
Meanwhile, an investigation by the opposition publication Hetq in February revealed that Sark- issian's nomination may have clashed with an