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    Categories: 2018

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 12/12/2018

                                        Wednesday, 

Radical Group Insists On Another Snap Election In Armenia

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenia - Varuzhan Avetisian (secon from left) and other leaders of the Sasna 
Tsrer party start their election campaign in Yerevan, November 26, 2018.

A leader of a nationalist party who stormed a police base in Yerevan together 
with his supporters in 2016 has reiterated its claims that early parliamentary 
elections will again be held in Armenia in the near future.

Varuzhan Avetisian said the newly elected Armenian parliament dominated by 
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s allies will have to be dissolved because it 
will fail to cope with challenges facing the country.

“That this parliament will not be able to fully serve its [five-year] term is 
obvious to us,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenians service (Azatutyun.am).

Avetisian’s Sasna Tsrer party is a rebranded version of Founding Parliament, a 
radical movement that challenged the former Armenian government. The recently 
established party is named after an armed group that seized the police base in 
Yerevan’s Erebuni district in July 2016.

The three dozen gunmen led by Avetisian demanded that then President Serzh 
Sarkisian free Founding Parliament’s jailed leader, Zhirayr Sefilian, and step 
down. They laid down their weapons after a two-week standoff with security 
forces which left three police officers dead.

Despite standing trial on serious charges, Avetisian and the vast majority of 
the other arrested gunmen were set free shortly after Pashinian came to power 
in May in a wave of anti-Sarkisian protests. Sefilian was also released from 
prison following the “velvet revolution.”

Sasna Tsrer was one of the 11 political groups that ran in the December 9 
parliamentary elections. According to the official election results, it won 
only 1.8 percent of the vote, compared with 70.4 percent polled by Pashinian’s 
My Step alliance.

Avetisian and his associates declared at the start of the election campaign 
last month that the new National Assembly will have to be dissolved within two 
years.

Pashinian reacted furiously to those statements on November 26. He warned that 
Sasna Tsrer leaders and activists will “feel the taste of asphalt” if they 
attempt to destabilize the political situation in Armenia. The party condemned 
Pashinian’s “threats.”

Avetisian insisted that the holding of another snap ballot is a matter of time. 
He did not specify just how his party will strive to force such polls, saying 
only that “life” and “public opinion” will necessitate their conduct.

He also said: “I’m sure that Mr. Pashinian is a farsighted and reasonable 
person, and when conditions become ripe he will opt for that solution. It will 
only help to maintain his approval rating.”



Authorities Seek Arrest Of Former Kocharian Aide

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenia - Armen Gevorgian, April 22, 2008.

Armenian law-enforcement authorities have moved to arrest a former top aide to 
former President Robert Kocharian after bringing more criminal charges against 
him.

The once powerful official, Armen Gevorgian, has also been charged with 
assisting in an “overthrow of the constitutional order,” corruption and money 
laundering, his lawyer told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) on 
Wednesday.

The lawyer, Erik Aleksanian, said he is not authorized yet to divulge details 
of the grave accusations. He said his client categorically denies them.

“We certainly believe that the accusations are fabricated and have nothing to 
do with reality,” added Aleksanian.

A court will open on Thursday hearings on Gevorgian’s pre-trial arrest sought 
by the Special Investigative Service (SIS).

Gevorgian was already charged in August with obstructing justice in the wake of 
a disputed 2008 presidential election. The SIS claims that he pressured a 
member of Armenia’s Constitutional Court to uphold the official election 
results that gave victory to Kocharian’s preferred successor, Serzh Sarkisian.

That accusation, also denied by Gevorgian, seems to be based on a leaked U.S. 
diplomatic cable sent to Washington in March 2008 by Joseph Pennington, the 
then U.S. charge d’affaires in Yerevan.

Pennington met with the Constitutional Court judge, Valeri Poghosian, two days 
before the court rejected an appeal lodged by Levon Ter-Petrosian, the main 
opposition presidential candidate. In that message publicized by Wikileaks, the 
diplomat cited Poghosian as alleging that Kocharian has “fixed” the upcoming 
court ruling.

Poghosian, who retired in 2014, did not explicitly confirm the claims 
attributed to him when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) in 
August. “I did not say such a thing. I told [American diplomats] some facts 
which they portray as pressure,” he said.


Armenia - President Robert Kocharian (R) and his senior adviser Armen Gevorgian 
at an election campaign rally in Yerevan, January 26, 2003.

Gevorgian was the chief of Kocharian’s staff during the final years of the 
latter’s ten-year rule that came to an end in April 2008. He went on to serve 
as Armenia’s deputy prime minister and hold other senior positions in the 
Sarkisian administration.

The fresh charges against Gevorgian were leveled just four days after Kocharian 
was arrested on charges of illegally using the armed forces against 
Ter-Petrosian supporters who protested in Yerevan on March 1-2, 2008. The SIS 
says that amounted to an “overthrow of the constitutional order.”

Kocharian strongly denies the charges. He says that Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian is waging a political “vendetta” against him.

Pashinian played a key role in the 2008 protests. Eight protesters and two 
police servicemen died when they were quelled by security forces.



Armenian General’s Pre-Trial Arrest Extended

        • Naira Bulghadarian

Armenia - Retired General Manvel Grigorian speaks at a congress of the 
Yerkrapah Union in Yerevan, 18 February 2017.

A court in Yerevan on Wednesday allowed investigators to keep Manvel Grigorian, 
a retired army general prosecuted on corruption charges, under arrest for two 
more months.

In a ruling condemned by Grigorian’s lawyers, the court again refused to 
release him from custody on bail.

Grigorian was arrested when security forces raided his properties in and around 
the town of Echmiadzin in June. They found many weapons, ammunition, medication 
and field rations for soldiers provided by the Armenian Defense Ministry. They 
also discovered canned food and several vehicles donated by Armenians at one of 
Grigorian’s mansions.

The once powerful general denies the accusations of illegal arms possession and 
embezzlement leveled against him. His lawyers have repeatedly demanded his 
release, saying that he is suffering from cancer and a number of other serious 
illnesses.

One of the lawyers, Arsen Mkrtchian, insisted that his client cannot receive 
adequate medical treatment in prison. He accused the judge in the case, Marine 
Melkonian, of turning the court into a “branch of the Special Investigative 
Service,” a law-enforcement body that requested Grigorian’s continued 
incarceration.

“I don’t know of any other accused person who is kept under arrest for so long 
despite suffering serious diseases and being ready to compensate [the state] 
for the damage,” Mkrtchian told reporters after the court’s decision.

The lawyer also said that he is trying to convince Grigorian to appeal to the 
European Court of Human Rights. The general has been reluctant to do so, he 
said.

In October, Grigorian offered to donate his vast land holdings near Echmiadzin 
to the state. His lawyers presented the offer as a gesture of goodwill.

Grigorian, 62, served as Armenia’s deputy defense minister from 2000-2008. 
Until his arrest he was also the chairman of the Yerkrapah Union of Karabakh 
war veterans, an organization which was particularly influential in the 1990s 
and the early 2000s. He was reelected to the Armenian parliament in April 2017 
on the ticket of then President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party.



Press Review



Lragir.am discusses some analysts’ belief that there are no real opposition 
parties in Armenia’s newly elected parliament. The publication agrees that 
Gagik Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) should not be taken seriously 
anymore and notes that Edmon Marukian’s Bright Armenia party is regarded by 
some as a “puppet opposition.” “The issue of a new kind of opposition, a 
counterweight to the government is really pressing,” it says. But it insists 
that the former ruling Republican Party (HHK) is too discredited and 
“unconstructive” to be the answer to the problem.

“Aravot” tries to explain the failure of another party, the Armenian 
Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), to win any parliament seats. The 
paper says that while there may be something “romantic” about Dashnaktsutyun’s 
anti-Turkish nationalist rhetoric the party’s close ties to the former Armenian 
governments have alienated many voters. “The party should have tried to 
preserve its positive image which took shape among a certain part of the 
electorate during [former President Levon] Ter-Petrosian’s rule,” it says in an 
editorial. “In this latest election campaign Dashnaktsutyun revived its 
socialist creed, criticizing government plans to cut poverty benefits and 
downsize the state apparatus. But it’s impossible to restore within two weeks a 
reputation that has been tarnished for the past 20 years. Having no deputies in 
the National Assembly could actually be useful for the party in terms of 
rethinking its activities and cooperating with other nationalist forces active 
in Armenia.”

“Zhoghovurd” is scathing about a demonstration that was held in Yerevan on 
Tuesday by about hundred supporters of former President Robert Kocharian 
demanding his release from prison. The paper says the protest was organized by 
a hitherto unknown group called the Armenian National Alliance. It cites some 
representatives of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s political team as saying 
that the group’s leader, Armen Minasian, sought to cooperate with their 
movement shortly after the velvet revolution. It also notes that Kocharian’s 
younger son voiced support for the protest on social media.

(Lilit Harutiunian)


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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