In his wrap-up of Armenia’s achievements and shortcomings for the current year, HAK (Armenian National Congress) representative Davit Shahnazaryan stated that he would be hard pressed to come up with any successes by the present government in power. Mr. Shahnazaryan, during a press conference held today, stated that Armenia’s economy was headed for a collapse and that it had nothing to do with the global crisis. He said the crisis only revealed the true nature of the country’s economic situation and argued that the oligarchic system in place was one of the greatest threats now facing Armenia. Turning to the political state of affairs, Mr. Shahnazaryan noted that the persecutions had persisted and that the regime had, once again, revealed its anti-democratic nature. As an example, he pointed to the eight year sentence the prosecutor had demanded in the trial of “Haykakan Zhamanak” editor Nikol Pashinyan. The HAK official stated that it just went to prove that the regime was not interested in engaging in a conversation with the public and that it preferred to resort to repressive means. When asked to comment on the advances made by HAK, Mr. Shahnazaryan said that given the present political situation it would be difficult to regard anything as a success. “But the HAK established itself as well-entrenched opposition force. The future leadership and opposition of Armenia is today to be found within the ranks of the HAK,” he stated, noting that the biggest shortcoming of the HAK was that there were still fifteen political prisoners as the year came to a close. In terms of foreign affairs, Mr. Shahnazaryan argued that the Armenian-Turkish protocol process was a done deal both for Turkey and the international community. “The Armenian authorities now find themselves searching for any possible way to at least partially moderate the consequences of their mistakes. I think that the activities of the Minsk Group will quicken in the near future. And the fact that the co-chairs visited Baku and not Yerevan in December can only mean that all the issues with Yerevan have been resolved,” he commented. Regarding the Armenia-Turkey Protocols, Mr. Shahnazaryan declared that Turkey was always up front in terms of progress in the Karabakh conflict settlement as a prerequisite for Armenian-Turkish normalization. He said that official Yerevan had recently comprehended the seriousness of the threat. Mr. Shahnazaryan added that he ruled out the possibility of the U.S. officially recognizing the 1915 Genocide and that Turkey was well aware of this. “Washington would never risk having another anti-American inclined nation in the region in addition to Iran,” he argued.