Wednesday, February 06, 2019
Former Army Chief Wants To Run For Karabakh President
February 06, 2019
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Samvel Babayan, a retired army general, is greeted by supporters in
Yerevan after being released from prison, 15 June 2018.
Samvel Babayan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s former military leader, has expressed his
desire to run in a presidential election that will be held in the
Armenian-populated territory next year.
In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian service, Babayan said he will start
collecting next month signatures of local residents in a bid to circumvent a
legal provision that bars him from running for Karabakh president.
“I realize that I still have a role to play there,” he said. “I’m not finished
and will try to do everything to be of use [to Karabakh.]”
Babayan, 53, was the commander of Karabakh’s Armenian-backed army during and
after the 1991-1994 war with Azerbaijan. He was widely regarded as the
unrecognized republic’s most powerful man at that time.
Babayan was arrested in 2000 and subsequently sentenced to 14 years in prison
for allegedly masterminding a botched attempt on the life of the then Karabakh
president, Arkady Ghukasian. He was set free in 2004.
Babayan lived in Russia for five years before returning to Armenia in 2016. He
was again arrested in Yerevan in March 2017 on charges of illegal arms
acquisition and money laundering which he strongly denied.
The arrest came about two weeks before Armenian parliamentary elections.
Babayan unofficially coordinated the election campaign of an opposition
alliance challenging then Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian.
A Yerevan court sentenced the once powerful general to six years in prison in
November 2017. Armenia’s Court of Cassation overturned the verdict in June
2018, ordering Babayan’s release from prison. The decision came more than a
month after Sarkisian was overthrown in a popular uprising led by Nikol
Pashinian, the current Armenian prime minister.
Around the same time Bako Sahakian, Karabakh’s president, announced that he
will not seek reelection when his current term in office ends in 2020. Sahakian
has been in power since 2007.
Under Karabakh law, only those individuals who have resided in Karabakh for the
past 10 years can participate in the 2020 presidential election. Babayan does
not meet that requirement.
Citing another legal provision, the former strongman said that he can overcome
that hurdle if his presidential candidacy is backed by thousands of Karabakh
Armenians. “We will start the signature collection in March and then see if the
authorities comply with or ignore what the constitution stipulates,” he said.
Asked whether he thinks the current Karabakh leadership will let him enter the
presidential race, Babayan said: “At my penultimate meeting with Bako Sahakian,
I said: ‘Let’s draw a line and forget everything: all the conflicts and
problems.’ It seemed to me that they must realize that Armenia and Karabakh are
now in such a difficult situation that it makes no sense to keep having
grudges, settling scores or feuding with one or another person.”
Armenian Police Chief Objects To Amnesty For Radical Group
February 06, 2019
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Valeri Osipian (R), the chief of the Armenian police, arrives in a
courtroom in Yerevan, February 6, 2019.
The chief of the Armenian police, Valeri Osipian, on Wednesday spoke out
against pardoning members of a radical group who stormed a police base in
Yerevan and held him and several other officers hostage in 2016.
The three dozen gunmen demanded that then President Serzh Sarkisian free the
jailed leader of their Founding Parliament movement, Zhirayr Sefilian, and step
down. They laid down their weapons after a two-week standoff with security
forces which left three police officers dead.
Shortly after Sarkisian resigned in April 2018 amid peaceful mass protests, all
but two members of the group calling itself Sasna Tsrer were set free pending
the outcome of their trials. The two defendants remaining behind bars stand
accused of murdering Colonel Artur Vanoyan and Warrant Officers Gagik Mkrtchian
and Yuri Tepanosian.
Last fall the new Armenian authorities declared a general amnesty applying to
hundreds of convicts and criminal suspects, including the Sasna Tsrer members.
A relevant law passed by the Armenian parliament made clear, however, that the
latter can be pardoned only with the consent of their former hostages and other
victims of the deadly attack.
Osipian made clear that he is not giving his consent to the amnesty for Sasna
Tsrer as he testified at an ongoing trial of the group’s members. “I lost
comrades,” he told the presiding judge. “Had I not lost comrades my position
may have been different. I think that everyone must be subjected to a
punishment defined by the law.”
“There was a crime and everyone involved in it must bear responsibility,”
Osipian insisted when he spoke to reporters in the courtroom.
Armenia - The funeral in Yerevan of Yuri Tepanosian, an Armenian police officer
killed in a standoff between security forces and opposition gunmen, 1Aug2016.
Osipian was a deputy chief of Yerevan’s police department when the police base
located in the city’s southern Erebuni district was seized by Sasna Tsrer in
July 2016. He went into the sprawling compound shortly after the pre-dawn
attack. He and the other policemen taken hostage there were released a few days
later.
In his court testimony, Osipian said that he was beaten up by several gunmen
while being captured by them. He claimed that they also threatened to kill him
if he refused to tell police forces to join Sasna Tsrer.
Together with Sefilian, the freed leaders and members of the armed formed last
year a political party also called Sasna Tsrer. It was one of the 11 groups
that ran in parliamentary elections held in Armenia on December 9. According to
the official election results, Sasna Tsrer won only 1.8 percent of the vote and
thus failed to win any seats in the new parliament.
Armenian Government Unveils Economic Growth Targets
February 06, 2019
Armenia - Workers at a tech company based in the Engineering City just outside
Yerevan, August 22, 2018.
Armenia’s economy should grow by at least 5 percent annually and thereby
“substantially” cut poverty in the country, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
government said in its five-year policy program unveiled on Wednesday.
The 70-page program laying out the government’s priorities and policies was
made public two months after Pashinian’s My Step alliance won snap
parliamentary elections by a landslide. Speaking at a cabinet meeting in
Yerevan, the premier said it will undergo minor “editorial” changes before
being submitted to the Armenian parliament by the end of this week.
The document’s almost certain approval by the National Assembly will amount to
a vote of confidence in the government. My Step holds a two-thirds majority in
the parliament.
The program declares the government’s commitment to a “competitive and
inclusive economy” primarily driven by hi-tech industries. It says the
government will strive for this by significantly improving tax administration,
easing business regulations, guaranteeing fair competition, attracting foreign
investment and stimulating exports and innovation.
This, the document adds, should translate into an average GDP growth rate of at
least 5 percent in 2019-2023. “At the same time, a considerably larger number
of citizens should participate in economic development, and economic output
created as a result of their work should be distributed more evenly,” it says.
Armenia’s former government set practically the same growth targets in its last
five-year program drawn up in 2017. It pledged to reduce the official poverty
rate, which stands at around 30 percent, by 12 percentage points by 2022.
Pashinian’s government is likewise promising “substantial” reductions in the
poverty and unemployment rates. But it has set no specific targets.
Also, both the current and former government programs describe a steady and
rapid increase in Armenian exports as the main engine of faster GDP growth.
Ever since he swept to power in May 2018, Pashinian has repeatedly promised to
carry out an “economic revolution” that will significantly improve the lives of
ordinary Armenians. He has said his government has already succeeded in
practically eradicating corruption and breaking up economic monopolies that
have long hampered the country’s development.
According to official statistics, Armenian economy grew by 7.5 percent in 2017.
It was on course to expand by roughly 5.3 percent in 2018.
According to the latest World Bank projections, Armenian growth will slow to
4.3 percent in 2019 and accelerate slightly in the following years.
April 24 Declared Commemoration Day Of Armenian Genocide In France
February 06, 2019
France - French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during the Co-ordination
Council of Armenian Organisations of France (CCAF) annual dinner in Paris,
February 5, 2019.
French President Emmanuel Macron has declared April 24 as a day for the
commemoration in France of the 1915 genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.
Macron announced the move late on Tuesday at an annual dinner of the
Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations in France (CCAF). The Reuters
news agency quoted him as saying that France was among the first nations to
denounce “the murderous hunt of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire.”
“France is, first and foremost, a country that knows how to look history in the
face,” he said, according to the France24 TV channel.
France officially recognized the World War One-era slaughter of some 1.5
million Armenians as genocide with a law passed by its parliament 2001. It is
home to an estimated 500,000 ethnic Armenians, most of them descendants of
survivors of the genocide.
Macron spoke of his “admiration” for the French-Armenian community and visited
the Armenian genocide memorial in Paris when he ran for president in 2017. The
CCAF, which is an umbrella structure uniting the leading French-Armenian
organizations, endorsed his presidential candidacy.
Turkey strongly condemned Macron’s decision on Wednesday. According to the
Associated Press, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said
Macron tried to "save the day" and make political gains in the face of
"political problems in his own country.”
Press Review
February 06, 2019
“Zhoghovurd” says all eyes are now on a policy program of Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian’s government that will be unveiled this week. The paper says this is
so because public expectations from the government are much greater than from
the previous Armenian cabinets. It claims that the latter came up with nicely
written programs that were rarely put into practice. “Pashinian’s government
came to power as a result of a popular movement,” says the paper sympathetic to
it. “The people’s expectations and requirements from the government are
therefore great.”
“Zhamanak” says that Nagorno-Karabakh’s former military leader, Samvel Babayan,
has effectively announced his return to active politics and, in particular, his
intention to run in next year’s Karabakh presidential election. “It is clear to
everyone that Armenia’s and Karabakh’s internal political realities are
interconnected,” comments the paper. “It just could not have been otherwise. In
essence, it’s impossible to return to active Karabakh politics without also
becoming active in Armenia’s political domain as well.” It says that Babayan’s
political comeback will have important implications for both Karabakh and
Armenia.
“Aravot” seems skeptical about a recent series of high-level
Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations that have fuelled renewed speculation about
progress towards the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “The Armenian
prime minister has made important and correct emphases: the lands-for-status
formula will not be discussed,” writes the paper. “We need to take the next
step and say what the Armenian side thinks should be discussed: Karabakh’s
internationally recognized independence and reunification with Armenia. We
should counter [Azerbaijani] maximalism with our own maximalism.”
(Lilit Harutiunian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2019 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
www.rferl.org