Thursday, February 8, 2017 Snap Election In Azerbaijan Unrelated To Karabakh Talks, Says Yerevan . Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia - Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharian holds a news conference in Yerevan, 23Nov2016. A senior Armenian diplomat denied on Thursday any connection between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's decision to call a snap presidential election and ongoing Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks on Nagorno-Karabakh. In a decree announced on Monday, Aliyev brought the date of Azerbaijan's next presidential election forward by more than six months, to April 11. He did not explain the reasons for the unexpected decision which swiftly drew sharp criticism from his beleaguered opponents. Some observers have suggested that the move may be connected with the Karabakh peace process which has intensified of late. "I don't think that Azerbaijan is a country where elections matter," Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharian told reporters. "Election results there are always predetermined. So I would link the earlier-than-expect holding of elections in Azerbaijan with their intra-clan relationships." "Of course, external factors may also be at play," said Kocharian. "If there is an internal struggle for power there, then any information to the effect that a rival side in that struggle may be backed by other states could also have an impact." Aliyev met on Wednesday with the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, who travelled to Baku at the start of their latest tour of the Karabakh conflict zone. According to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, Aliyev and the mediators "reached an agreement on the continuation of intensive negotiations after the presidential elections in Armenia and Azerbaijan." The mediators were due to arrive in Yerevan on Thursday for similar talks with President Serzh Sarkisian. The latter will complete his second and final presidential term on April 9, two days before the Azerbaijani presidential ballot. Armenia's next president will be elected by the parliament in early March and have largely ceremonial powers because of the country's transition to the parliamentary system of government. Sarkisian is tipped to become prime minister later in April. Aliyev and Sarkisian pledged to step up the protracted search for a Karabakh settlement at their most recent meeting held in Geneva in October. Their foreign ministers held follow-up talks in December and January. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov described those talks as "positive." Minister Rejects Tax Cuts Demanded By Armenian Opposition . Hovannes Movsisian Armenia - Finance Minister Vartan Aramian speaks at a news conference in Yerevan, 25Sep2017. Finance Minister Vartan Aramian on Thursday dismissed opposition calls for the Armenian government to reverse recent increases in personal income and fuel taxes. The Tsarukian Bloc and the Yelk alliance are particularly critical of higher excise duties on fuel that came into force on January 1. The two opposition groups represented in the Armenian parliament blame them for recent weeks' sizable rises in fuel prices. The National Assembly is due to debate next week a Yelk bill that would repeal the new tax rates. Echoing statements by Prime Minister Karen Karapetian, Aramian insisted that their impact on consumer price inflation will be minimal. "When discussing [the recent amendments to] the Tax Code, we definitely took into account the impact of higher excise tax rates on [overall] prices," he told reporters. "It's estimated at just 0.5 percentage points." Aramian also made the point that tax cuts are a wrong way to reduce the cost of living in any country. "Tax legislation or taxes are not the right tool for helping socially vulnerable categories of the population," he said. "This is not done through tax rates around the world." The minister further argued that the government needs more tax revenue to finance greater budgetary spending planned by it. The government would be wrong to resort to internal or external borrowing for that purpose, he said. Yelk leaders say the authorities should boost their tax revenue by cracking down on tax evasion and corruption instead. They also claim that the higher income tax rates will hurt the middle class hard. Government officials counter that only those Armenians who earn well above the average wage in the country will be taxed more. They say 90 percent of workers will not have any additional sums deducted from their wages. Armenian Presidential Frontrunner To Meet Opposition . Ruzanna Stepanian Armenia - Former Prime Minister Armen Sarkissian visits the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan, 31 January 2018. The opposition Yelk alliance reiterated on Thursday that its parliament deputies will not vote for President Serzh Sarkisian's pick for the next head of state despite agreeing to meet him. Edmon Marukian, one of the bloc's leaders, told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) that the meeting with former Prime Minister Armen Sarkissian will take place on Friday. Marukian said Sarkissian was aware of Yelk's stance when he proposed the meeting. "We expect to hear from Mr. Sarkissian about his vision, about how he imagines his activities as president and how he sees Armenia's course given the existing challenges," said Marukian. The Armenian parliament is due to elect a new and less powerful president of the republic one month before Serzh Sarkisian serves out his final presidential term on April 9. The outgoing president offered Armen Sarkissian (no relation) to become the ruling Republican Party's presidential candidate late last month. Sarkissian, who currently serves as Armenia's ambassador to Britain, said he needs "some time" to decide whether to accept the offer. He said he will hold consultations with major political and civic groups before making the decision. The Republican Party (HHK) spokesman, Eduard Sharmazanov, suggested on Thursday that the nominee will make the decision after his meetings with the parliamentary opposition, which also includes businessman Gagik Tsarukian's alliance. "It will be difficult for him to make a final decision without meeting with the opposition," claimed Sharmazanov. "So I think our presidential candidate is right to meet with representatives of Yelk and the Tsarukian Bloc. Under the Armenian constitution, a presidential candidate has to be backed by a three-fourths and two-thirds majority of lawmakers in order to win in the first and second rounds of voting respectively. A simple majority of votes is enough to win the presidency in the third round. The HHK has such a majority. Nevertheless, President Sarkisian has expressed hope that the former prime minister will win outright in the first round. In that case, the latter would need the backing of at least 79 members of the 105-seat parliament. The HHK and its junior coalition partner, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), control 65 parliament seats. They will therefore need the support of the Tsarukian Bloc which holds 31 seats. New Armenian Government Post Sparks Controversy . Tatevik Lazarian Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian (L) and Prime Minister Karen Karapetian shake hands before an official ceremony at the Yerablur military cemetery in Yerevan, 28 January 2018. Opposition lawmakers denounced as unconstitutional on Thursday government plans to create the post of first deputy prime minister who will be appointed after Armenia becomes a parliamentary republic in April. Under a government bill debated by the National Assembly, the first deputy premier will be one of the members of a new security body to be headed by the next Armenian prime minister, the country's most powerful official. Edmon Marukian, a leader of the opposition Yelk bloc, argued that Armenia's constitution says only that the prime minister can have up to three deputies responsible for various policy areas. "The constitution does not single out any of them," said Marukian. "It doesn't say that one of them shall be first deputy prime minister while the two others just deputy prime ministers, which in essence means a hierarchy." "Unless we correct this now, we will have an unconstitutional law," he added during the heated debate. Artur Hovannisian, a deputy justice minister who presented the bill to lawmakers, denied that. "I absolutely do not agree with your position," he said. "The constitution does not contain any restrictions on this issue." Hovannisian did acknowledge, though, that the first deputy prime minister will have more powers than the two other vice-premiers. In particular, he or she will run the government "in the prime minister's absence," added the official. The planned creation of the new government post is seen by some opposition figures and pundits as another sign that President Serzh Sarkisian intends to stay in power as prime minister after completing his final presidential term in April. The outgoing president has shed little light on his plans so far. Nikol Pashinian, another Yelk leader, charged that Sarkisian has broken a pledge to let Prime Minister Karen Karapetian retain his post after Armenia's transition to the parliamentary system of government. "In order to mitigate this cheating process a little, he is giving [Karapetian] a consolation prize: the post of first deputy prime minister," he said. Pashinian also likened the constitution, controversially amended in 2015, and new laws stemming from it to a "suit tailor-made for Serzh Sarkisian." Press Review "Haykakan Zhamanak" is dissatisfied with the Armenian authorities' response to death threats made against Marianna Grigorian, the editor of the Medialab.am publication. The paper says that law-enforcement bodies only reluctantly opened a criminal case in connection with those threats. It says that they had just as reluctantly identified and prosecuted a man who beat up an opposition parliamentarian in Yerevan a few years ago. That man never went to prison. "This is a mentality befitting the Middle Age," says the paper. "Zhamanak" comments on a government bill that would seriously restrict the next Armenia president's power to grant pardons. "It is not accidental that there is bitter infighting in the higher echelons of power regarding who will control one of the main segments of the [ruling] system: the criminal underworld," claims the paper. Pardons granted in Armenia have never been about justice and humanism, it says. "Zhoghovurd" accuses the government of presenting misleading data to prove that Prime Minister Karen Karapetian has delivered on his pledge to attract at least $830 million in investments Armenia's public infrastructure and businesses last year. Karapetian said in the parliament on Wednesday that the actual investments exceeded that figure. The paper points to official statistics showing that foreign direct investment (FDI) in Armenia fell short of government projections and was mainly channeled into the Armenian mining sector. The government, it says, has used a flawed methodology to report a much higher investment total, which includes money spent by the government. "Hraparak" complains that Armenians are now unwilling to take to the streets and protest against their government in large number. The paper sees a sharp contrast with 1988 when huge crowds gathered in Yerevan to demand Karabakh's unification with Armenia despite stern warnings issued by the Soviet authorities. "People were not scared of the Moscow Politburo and the tanks brought by it," it says. (Tigran Avetisian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2018 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org