In Armenia’s political circus, the role of Tsarukyan hasn’t changed all that much since 2004, when he founded the BHK. In all subsequent elections, Tsarukyan has buffering role for the political regime in power, guaranteeing its relatively smooth reelection and becoming its bulwark of continuity and security.
The Co-chairs, by neglecting the causes and only looking at the effects and proposing situational solutions, are continuing their failed and dangerous tactics. In this light, they assume full responsibility for any possible future warfare and for any possible flare-up along the Line of Contact.
This directly signifies that Russia’s actual demand from Yerevan is that does not get involved in any possible Azerbaijani military operations against the NKR; at least until the time that Moscow finds it necessary to grant such permission to Yerevan.
Pro-Kremlin political pundits explain this Russian parity regarding the situation by arguing that Nagorno Karabakh does not fall within the parameters of the CSTO defense pact and that the Russian-Armenian defense pact relates to Armenia, and no Karabakh.
He has given the responsibility to Jean-Paul Costa, former president of the European Court of Human Rights.
Zurabyan, in an October 9 press briefing, said that he had evidence that Harutyunyan, who also heads the committee to implement the changes, had bribed the Venice Commission.
The only positive revolutionary outcome of all this is that society has seen, and perhaps learnt, how the process of manipulating information flows, via sleight of hand, has taken place before their eyes.
Things aren't really as bad as they might seem. We can consider all of Armenia’s issues with corruption solved with the formation of the Anti-Corruption Council. We can even start thinking about setting a non-working holiday marking the victory of the end to corruption.
And what is Hovik Abrahamyan doing today? Almost immediately after being appointed and under the influence of the lobbying of oligarch lawmakers, he instructed to abolish the so-called "luxury tax" which the former PM had introduced as a supposed expression of the state upholding the principle of social justice.
By doing so, Armenia joined a club of nations including North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Belarus. In all, eleven countries voted against the resolution and 100 supported it.
After such meetings, the participants say they are discussing how to lift the country from its current poor socioeconomic situation, among which, it seems, the option of regime change is not included.
Later that evening, Hovannisian finally succeeded in reaching his precious Baghramyan 26 and to return to Freedom Square. But what did it all give him and the movement?
The powers participating in the Yerevan municipal elections are revealing their different formulations for their perceived type of Yerevan mayor with their candidates. For example, the Prosperous Armenia Party, the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun and the Heritage Party or "Barev Yerevan" alliance suggest political figures, while the Rule of Law Party's choices are administrative.
The committee didn’t want to accept the recording as a factual, self-confession, although the deputy never claimed that it wasn’t his voice. The president's position on not wanting oligarchs and businessmen in parliament is an indirect order to continue with the status quo.
The government considers any compromise as a defeat; it always wants to deal with capitulating powers. The government sees potential victims in anyone, that it is possible to buy them off with positions and promises, or else be undermined or intimidated.
The first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, doesn’t want to join the social movementthat started after the presidential elections. Although he announced that Raffi Hovannisian actually won, he also added that he has no desire to join the movement, so long as he did not see a concrete plan of action put forth by the movement's leaders.
While Raffi Hovannisian voted in Liberty Square to contest the election results in the Constitutional Court, deputy of the National Assembly Ruben Hakobyan (Heritage Party) together with deputies from the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun and the President of the National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan debatedwhether to call a special session of the National Assembly to discuss holdingsnap elections.
During his tête-à-tête meeting with President Serzh Sargsyan, Raffi Hovannisian offered three proposals in order to emerge from the created political pre-crisis situation, and all three proposals were rejected.
Presidential candidate AndreasGhoukasyan, who announced his hunger strike 26 days ago, said recently that his health condition was discussed more often than the political and civil demands underlying his hunger strike.
In a February 7 interview with the newspaper Chorrord Inknishkhanutyun, Armenian National Congress (HAK) leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan declared that the time had come to transform the alliance into a unified political party.
When the Prosperous Armenia Party, ARF-Dashnaktsutyun and Armenian National Congress announced that they would not participate in the presidential election with their own candidates or support any other candidate, it became obvious that the first and second presidents of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Robert Kocharian, are leaving the stage for a while.
The chosen strategy of refusing to participate in the presidential elections taken by the major Armenian political parties--the Prosperous Armenia Party, the Armenian National Congress and ARF-Dashnaktsutyun--was a concrete action and an expression of political will. But their mutual decision wasn’t a way to promote action; instead it created inaction, self-isolation and marginalization.
The most distinctive feature of Serzh Sargsyan's rule is that he as a leader has done and is doing everything possible for clearingthe political field andgaining visibility. Confrontations and competition aren't for him, as he prefers to play on a chessboard where there are no serious pieces, only hopeless pawnscut off from one other.
Gagik Tsarukyan decided that he would not participate in the 2013 presidential election, at least formally. Based on his decision, the Prosperous Armenia Party announced that it would not support any candidate in the elections.
On December 10 during the Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) meeting in Dublin US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Russian policy and integration processes, which repress opposition in Europe and Central Asia, resemble sovietization by being called a "customsunion" or "Eurasian Union."
Europe needs stable, not democratic, elections, meaning that Brussels needs a stable, predictive and adaptive Armenia, not an Armenia that respects democracy or human rights.
At a press conference yesterday in Yerevan, Vaycheslav Kovalenko, Russia’s Ambassador to Armenia, presented irrefutable evidence that the migration issue in Armenia is indeed a real nightmare.
The second important factor, was the expectation that Armenia would take extreme, perhaps even hysterical and unbalanced measures, especially related to the Karabakh negotiations process; in particular, that Armenia would pull out of the talks, immediately recognize Artsakh, or even go so far as to physically remove Safarov.
After all, it was at a NATO military exercise that Margaryan was murdered but the military alliance avoided any political evaluation, and thus, by encouraging Baku’s anti-Armenian stance and freeing the hands of member state Hungary, facilitating the despicable transaction between the two some eight years later
Aznavour isn’t to blame that Rabat is located in neigh boring Georgia, where his father’s roots are from. Rabat painfully reminds us that noting on such a scale has been done in Armenia during that past twenty years. And we constantly point out that tourism is a leading sector of the Armenian economy. Who are we kidding?
Again, for the third time in the history of independent Armenia, the authorities are trying to convince people that the problems of the country aren’t being resolved due to an imperfect Constitution and flawed legislation.
Who else but the ruling party is responsible if these armed guards continue to operate and in a much more dishonourable fashion than before? It was the party that stubbornly refused to draft legislation to regulate these guys.
Surprisingly, Civilitas has only garnered the attention of the National Security Service (NSS) after its founder, Vardan Oskanian, became a member of the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) and was elected to the parliament as an MP, adopting the stance of a serious oppositionist.
Bribes were handed out all over the place and out in the open. Despite this, law enforcement only recorded two cases of bribery.
Perhaps this is the reason why individual reps of the political forces, and not the parties themselves, used the internet and various social networks to present the public with an overall image of the parties, their activities and underlying motivations.
Rare were the attempts of the press to dig deeper and connect the dots, especially when it came to the financial statements of government officials whose meager salaries could not jive with the large amounts of reported revenues and cash holdings
The stations have followed the rules for the most part and have provided equal time to all political forces in the race. As to whether the parties have been able to utilize these resources is less dependent on the stations than the financial and creative possibilities of the parties themselves.
ANC - But the slogan’s formulation is quite a retreat. In 2008, the ANC was talking about victory. Coupled with loudspeakers blaring Beethoven’s 9th symphony, it was all quite intoxicating. It was a time of self-confidence and no concessions.
The three parties comprising the ruling coalition that are contesting the parliamentary elections have transformed the leitmotif of their slogans into a factor of faith.
Being so selective regarding their coverage, individual papers fall short of covering the entire political spectrum. Rather than providing information, we thus are faced with veiled or subliminal campaigning and propaganda.
We’re talking about the “virtual” scene – the internet. These sites have become the prime source of news and information for a growing number of Armenian citizens that have access to a computer and the web.
With the lowering of internet rates and the entrance of the web into even the most remote of villages, we must take a new look at the role of TV in shaping public opinion in the run-up to elections in Armenia.
At the 13th Republican Party Congress, President Serzh Sargsyan sounded more like a party leader preparing for the upcoming elections than a head of state.
Given the ongoing debate on the issue of whether to use a proportional or majoritarian electoral procedure in Armenia, you would think that this is the prime problem facing the country.
Even if the PAP was to leave the coalition and get elected, nothing would substantively change. On the contrary, given that the PAP serves the interests of small and large oligarchs, it becomes clear that this will be the party’s first priority while in power.
There is no common ground between the ANC and PAP – whether political, ideological nor motivational. This precludes any long-term cooperation between them.
The ANC is in a free-fall and every action it takes leads it to tactical defeat. This is proven by the following two realities.
The fact that Hambardzumyan has been able, up till now, to silently and effectively advance her business interest in the sector means that she has been regarded as a trustworthy element by the government.
During the past three years, Sargsyan has constantly striven to neutralize all the factors that were maintaining his dependency on Kocharyan. To a large degree, he has been successful.