ARMENIA’S RULING COALITION IN CRITICAL SITUATION

news.am
April 2 2010
Armenia

The coalition government of Armenia is going through critical times
and needs radical reforms, Hrair Karapetyan, the Chairman of the
Committee on Defense National Security and Internal Affairs, RA
Parliament, member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF),
told a press conference.

He stressed that by the reforms he means government socio-economic
programs, rather than individuals. "The present halfhearted economic
recovery measures are ineffective, and not only people, but also
government officials, are dissatisfied. I think the President should
draw conclusions and take radical steps to improve the situation,"
Karapetyan said. He pointed out that the Armenian Government’s quality
suffered after the ARF withdrew from the coalition. If urgent measures
to improve the socio-economic situation in Armenia are not taken,
Armenia’s national security and the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process
will be endangered.

As regards the general political situation, Karapetyan stressed that
"a positive regress" to the national values and ideas has lately
been observed.

"The Government is regressing and facilitating the international
recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The only thing that remains is
that this tendency be observed in the socio-economic sector as well,"
he said. Among the negative factors is, according to Karapetyan,
a radically polarized political arena in the country. "At present,
some political figures, mostly representing the ruling coalition,
keep on repeating all the words uttered by the President, doing so
with even greater fanaticism that the President himself, others,
particularly the radical Opposition, are criticizing everything,
their guiding principle being ‘the worse the better’," Karapetyan said.

Commenting on the rumors that the ARF is pushing forward the idea
and policy of the ex-president Robert Kocharyan, Karapetyan said:
"The ideas of neither Robert Kocharyan nor Serzh Sargsyan coincide
with those of ARF one hundred per cent. Everything is clear – Robert
Kocharyan is not an ARF member, and Serzh Sargsyan is a member of the
Republican Party of Armenia (RPA). If they shared ARF’s ideology they
would join our ranks," Karapetyan said.