“Freedom House” international human rights organization released its annual “Nations in Transit” report this week. The title of the report is somewhat misleading however, as the figures and data are all about the 2006. But anyway, here’s a link to the Country Summaries(pdf) and Armenia – Country Report section(pdf).
We can see from the first document, that while Georgia has improved its score from 4.86 to 4.68 (the smaller the figure, the better it is for democracy), Armenia and Azerbaijan have both degraded instead. The democracy score of Armenia has gone down from 5.14 to 5.21, and for Azerbaijan it has moved from 5.93 down to 6.00. Here’s the short summary for Armenia:
Little progress was made on redistributing power amongst government branches. Rather, consolidation of political power in the ruling party and elites paved the way for a continued grip on political and economic power during 2007 parliamentary elections. The government’s failure to investigate allegations of fraud during the 2005 referendum, and its inability to produce legislation putting into effect approved amendments, demonstrated the lack of political will to improve governance in Armenia. While media organizations were partially successful in influencing a change in Armenia’s licensing regime and a new regulatory body, accelerated attacks on journalists suggested an increasingly difficult media environment in the run up to 2007 elections.
Of course we have yet to see what the report will say about the Parliamentary Elections 2007 in Armenia, which were recognized as Free and Fair by a number of observation missions. I guess we will see some positive changes in the figures in Freedom House’s report next year. Let’s prey, that its not just the figures improving, but lives of people here in Armenia. So far I’m rather skeptical…
By the way – one of the things that is giving Armenia a face-lift in this report is the Civil Society – it has a score of 3.50. There are some very interesting thoughts about the state of Civil Society and especially NGOs in the report:
Independent Media scores have gone from bad to worse since 1999 according to this report:
You will never see good things there.
The only possible case – is some kind of orange revolution.
Let’s just think about it – people, who give out materials for such book, can not see good things. They do not see, for example that we have 22 TV channels in Yerevan, while in all other countries there are 4-5. I’ve written about negativism – but their negativism have financial backing – just imagine, if everybody will see good things – they will lose their grants.
They do not see, that there was no diffamation cases, there was no closed newspapers, and the only “crime” in media field was that A1plus case, that was done in 2002, and still is printed in every report.
That Babajanyan is simply a criminal: why didn’t he paid his duty for army?
Or is his case fabricated?
These reports are nothing but tool of pressure.
Most of what you posted from the report is objectively correct. Undoubtedly, their glasses would be more rosy when looking at Georgia, but then, quite objectively, from all the sources I get the info on Georgia, she IS becoming a more fairly managed and less corrupt country, compared with Armenia.
I still hope, that the next year’s report about Armenia will be more positive considering the parliamentary elections.
For more information on Freedom House see the link below:
http://www.exile.ru/2005-December-28/freedoms_just_another_word_for_fascism.html
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