ARMENIAN NGO PUBLISHES REPORT ON POLITICAL, ECONOMIC SITUATION IN COUNTRY

Armenian Second TV Channel
Dec 26 2008
Armenia

[Presenter] The Civilitas foundation published today Armenia 2008:
Crisis and Opportunity report. It is the first one, and the foundation
attaches importance to this report on Armenia and the Caucasus that are
usually issued by international entities; and it believes that along
with the opinions of foreign experts, it is time to assess Armenia’s
political, economic and social developments from the Armenian point
of view.

The chairman of the foundation [former Foreign Minister] Vardan
Oskanyan; Armen Darbinyan; Armen Rustamyan [a senior member of the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun] and Hovhannes
Igityan today tried to suggest honestly and impartially ways out of
three major crises that have greatly influenced our life – 1 March
[post-election disturbances in Yerevan], the Russian-Georgian war and
the global financial crisis – looking at those from inside and outside.

According to Oskanyan, the situations is not good, moreover, it
is aggravating. The speakers agreed that parliament should have
suggested ways out of this situation; it [the parliament] does not
reflect wishes of the public at present and reforms need to be carried
out immediately.

[Oskanyan, speaking at a news conference] Many things have been done
over the past years, but at the same time many things have not been
done. Today the crisis shows that those undone things are having their
negative impact on our future development. Parliament is indeed one
of our "painful" problems because it is a political platform and at
present this political platform is not being used in the best way. At
present one should not be a mathematician for us to understand simple
arithmetic that – [end of recording]

[Armen Darbinyan, rector of Slavic University, speaking at the
news conference] The working style and the essence of parliament at
present does not at all ensure political peace in the country and
does not ensure presence of political viewpoints in the political and
public fields. This is the reason this process goes onto the streets
[referring to opposition protests].

[Rustamyan, speaking at the news conference] Flawed election relations
have been shaped in Armenia – a citizen no longer attaches importance
to his or her vote. In any democratic country this is the ultimate
right so that the person does not yield his or her right, does not
sell it if he of she is made to do so; the person needs to stick to
his or her right. We do not have this situation. It took us years to
create the current situation when a question arises why any government
should change this situation – this is quite a good situation [the
government would say]; it [the government] will use these election
relations so that elections become much more controllable.