Today the Democratic Motherland Party made a statement, in which there is the following line, “The opposition participated in the work of the joint staff against election fraud, one of the initiators of which was a coalition force that was engaged in election bribery.” In this regard, during a conversation [...]
In Armenia, everything is really personified. If one takes a look at the press digest on websites, the issues that concern our society the most are whether Hovik Abrahamyan will be the Prime Minister or Tigran Sargsyan. Or will the Minister of Culture be from the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), from the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) or non-partisan? Certainly, it is very important for the mentioned two parties, possible minister, his/her relatives, as well as the workers of the ministry – whom s/he will appoint, whom s/he will fire, whether she will “eat” moderately or will devour what s/he can. However, if one looks at that issue, for example, from the perspective of a music school teacher, the personality of the minister and his/her party membership lose their landmark significance and how much that teacher earns and why not, how much, at least, moral importance the state attaches to his/her work become much more important problems. Admittedly, comprehensive school teachers do important state work and they should receive state medical insurance packages and music school teachers just “provide services” like barbers or massagers and there is no package for them.
www.aravot.com asked Aram Karapetyan, the New Times Party (NTP) leader, to talk about the silence on the political stage after the election, the attitude of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) and the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), in particular. Mr. Karapetyan noted, “People keep silent in two cases – when [...]
I don’t like, when I quote myself beating the chest “what an accurate prediction I have made.” This time, however, I yield to the temptation; I wrote in my notes dated April 25, “I have no doubts that the RPA and the PAP will form an alliance after the election. I don’t even bet just humanely – why should I use people’s naivety?” (http://www.aravot.am/en/2012/04/25/63327/) Now, when it is almost 99-percent clear that the coalition of the previous convocation will be maintained in its former shape, I must note that it didn’t require being a big fortune-teller to predict that. I just want to ask credulous people not to take what politicians say for gospel, particularly when those are said before an election. For example, before the 2008 presidential election, Levon Ter-Petrossian, the first president and a candidate for president, said that if Serzh Sargsyan became the president, all oligarchs would become homeless. We can assert 4 years after that neither Gagik Tsarukyan, nor Ruben Hayrapetyan, nor Samvel Alexanyan has become homeless; on the contrary, they have multiplied their wealth. Didn’t the first president know that there would be no making homeless? Certainly, he did. However, what he said, as it is commonly called today, was a message – I will take care of you better than my opponent. Oligarchs didn’t believe that message.
Or the Cabinet has been talking about a technopark, a financial center, a north-south stream, an oil pipeline since the autumn of the same year. It turned out after 4 years that they have just laid the foundation of all that and the technopark is just a few labs and the financial center is moving the Central Bank to Dilijan. And generally, the global financial crisis impedes all that. Well, something always bothers a bad dancer. However, when the Cabinet officials said such things, they certainly knew quite well that there would be no “economic miracle.” They just needed to distract our, citizens’ attention or perhaps mind.
www.aravot.am inquired from Myasnik Malkhasyan, an Armenian National Congress (ANC) member and a former prisoner of conscience, whether he shared his friend, also prisoner of conscience, already former member of the ANC Ashot Zakaryan’s concerns about the cooperation between the PAP and the ANC. As we have informed, Ashot Zakryan, [...]
Different representatives of the Prosperous Armenia Party governing body stated earlier that they would convey the official opinion of the party on the results of the May 6 parliamentary election and would make it public after the final results of the election were published. On Sunday, the Central Election Commission [...]
Before the parliamentary election, the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), the Democratic Party of Armenia (DPA), the Armenian Communist Party (ACP) and the Rule of Law Party (RLP), had signed an application to the NSS. “Attaching importance to ruling out [...]
“The Republican Party didn’t hand out election bribe and the parties that are involved in that the most talk about it,” Karine Achemyan, an RPA MP, expressed this idea during a press conference today. During a conversation with www.aravot.am, Ms. Achemyan explained the fact that Levon Zurabyan, a member of [...]
Participating in the election in a party alliance has many inconveniences. The Republic bureaucratic union of 1995 existed till the end of 1997, when the first president’s positions weakened and the Republican Party of Armenia took sides with the more powerful one in 1998, giving a classic example of rats’ deserting. In 1999, the Union bureaucratic alliance was decapitated during the events of October 27, after which many members of that alliance took sides with the more powerful one once again. The Justice opposition alliance of 2003 collapsed, not playing a serious role in the opposition camp – today, different members of that alliance, Stepan Demirchyan, Vazgen Manukyan, Viktor Dallakyan, Aram Gasparich, take, to put it mildly, different political positions. The problem is that positions are different, to begin with, and those unions are created for pragmatic reasons – to take over the power or to maintain the power – and a light wind, which doubts that it is an efficient tool to maintain or take over the power, is a deadly disease. That is the very reason, why the coalition between the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) and the Rule of Law Party (RLP) will be most probably maintained and the Armenian National Congress (ANC) party alliance will, at least, diminish. The former continues to be a source of power and, therefore, money and the ANC has stopped being a tool of changing power.
For the chairman of the journalists’ club Asparez, the decision of the National Commission on TV and Radio (NCTR) to impose one-million-AMD fine on Kentron TV channel for anti-propaganda is a decision to constrain broadcasting live in Armenia. “The NCTR lets the whole world know that broadcasting live in Armenia [...]
Human rights advocate Vardges Gaspari, a member of the Armenian National Congress (ANC), is not excited about the cooperation between the ANC and the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), because, for him, the PAP is a political force that participated in the events of March 1, “Which got 300 police uniforms [...]
Tigran Urikhanyan, a member of the PAP, said during an interview given to a newspaper that Hmayak Hovhannisyan’s and Vartan Oskanian’s opinions on the possible coalition had not been checked with the PAP political council. Taking this into account, www.aravot.am asked Tigran Urikhanyan, “Does this mean that you think [...]
Petros Makeyan, an ANC member, didn’t see signs of continuing the struggle during the Armenian National Congress rally yesterday. Mr. Makeyan told www.aravot.am that as opposed to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and the Heritage Party, which made public the violations registered during the election, but seemed not to have [...]
Levon Ter-Petrossian expressed a very apt idea at the time – if you can call this administration “regime” in a mass media publishing legally (not at the level of samizdat), then there is actually no regime at all. Certainly, it is about despotism, which hasn’t been
there during the 20-year history of the independent Armenia and I hope it will never be there. More so now, when there are TV channels broadcasting in Armenia that express the opinions of the two parties and those parties – the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) – took an absolutely opposition attitude during the election campaign. Even if we don’t take into consideration websites and social networks, which are a relatively new phenomenon, and newspapers (opposition newspapers have always been there), then one can assert that the situation in the information field is absolutely new. Opposition TV channels haven’t broadcasted in Armenia – there was A1+, which was independent and which was deprived of broadcasting in 2002, the rest had been “free, but responsible” till April 2012.
Three things are left to do: 1. The political forces “owning” those two TV companies should maintain their relative independence; 2. Those mass media shouldn’t be too partisan and offer an opportunity to other oppositionists – the Armenian National Congress (ANC) and the Heritage Party – as well as representatives of the government and people outside the created system, to express themselves; 3. If the first two conditions are met, the government should be smart enough not to persecute these two TV channels. (By the way, it is interesting why the videos testifying to election fraud are not shown almost at all.)
“They don’t respond, because it is not the official opinion of the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP). When all political forces are ready, consultations will be held with everyone, the Republican Party will make a final decision inside through its bodies and we will make public our official opinion and approaches,” [...]
In response to a question what the difference between this parliamentary election and the previous one had been and how active people had been on the internet, Tigran Kocharyan, an information security specialist, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am, “This parliamentary election differed from the previous one by the fact [...]
“I think that one shouldn’t see it as a serious thing. In such cases, one should immediately call law-enforcement agencies. We ourselves do relevant work,” Davit Harutyunyan, an RPA head of the state and legal issues committee of the National Assembly, said, in response to an observation of www.aravot.am [...]
www.aravot.am inquired from Armen Poghosyan, the head of the Consumers’ Association NGO, the pre-election program of which party was the most populist and the program of which party the most realistic. Our interlocutor responded, “The most populist programs are the ones of the ruling Republican Party and the Prosperous Armenia [...]
This morning www.aravot.am was warned by a resident of Gyumri that people, holding passports in their hands, had gathered in front of the administration building in the vicinity of the church in the neighborhood of Ani, waiting for election bribe. According to an eye-witness who photographed the line for [...]
During a conversation with www.aravot.am, Lyudmila Sargsyan, the chairman of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP) nominated on the ANC list for proportional representation, thought reasonable not to rule out anything. The ANC always stated that the RPA had chances to get 3% in the May 6 election, therefore, we [...]
