ARMENIAN COALITION PARTY BRISTLES AT KOCHARIAN LINK
Emil Danielyan
/2035737.html
07.05.2010
The second most important party in Armenia’s governing coalition
strongly condemned on Friday an influential businessman close to
President Serzh Sarkisian for describing it as the brainchild of his
predecessor Robert Kocharian.
"It is really no secret that the [creation of the] Prosperous Armenia
Party (BHK) was the former president’s project," Barsegh Beglarian
told the "Aravot" daily in an interview published the same day.
Beglarian, who owns the country’s largest fuel-importing company,
made the claim as he dismissed renewed talk of mounting friction
between Sarkisian and Kocharian.
The BHK, which is led by another tycoon, Gagik Tsarukian, was quick
to respond to it with a scathing personal attack. "Being somebody’s
project was apparently Barsegh Beglarian’s childhood dream," the
BHK’s press service said in a statement.
"We would advise him to mind his business before making incorrect
evaluations," it said. "Judging from Beglarian’s failed projects,
he should not be lacking issues."
The party, which has three ministerial portfolios and boasts the
second largest faction in the Armenian parliament, claimed that
Beglarian has failed to set up a party of his own after a year-long
tour of and cities and villages across the country. It also questioned
the personal integrity Nagorno-Karabakh-born businessman who was a
university professor in the past.
Tsarukian is widely believed to have become one of Armenia’s wealthiest
men by the early 2000s thanks to a close personal relationship with
Kocharian. Accordingly, most local analysts think the ex-president
was behind the BHK’s inception in 2006. It was regarded then as a
counterweight to Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK).
The BHK launched its political activities in the months leading up to
the May 2007 parliamentary elections with a distribution of relief
aid to tends of thousands of impoverished farmers. It also tried to
win over urban voters by providing them with free medical aid and
other supposedly public services.
Despite claiming to have recruited over 400,000 members, Tsarukian’s
party did not prevent the HHK from winning the disputed vote by a
landslide. It backed Sarkisian in the February 2008 presidential
election and joined his coalition cabinet formed afterwards.
The BHK’s angry reaction to Beglarian’s remark follows weeks of
intense speculation about Kocharian’s alleged desire to return to
active politics and even government. It was stoked by Kocharian’s
thinly veiled criticism of the Armenian government’s economic policies
voiced in late March.
The criticism came one week after Tsarukian publicly lambasted Trade
and Economic Minister Nerses Yeritsian for declaring that the economic
crisis in Armenia is over. Yeritsian, who is affiliated with the HHK,
hit back at the tycoon.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
