Friday,
Armenian President Calls For ‘Unity’
Armenia -- President Armen Sarkissian (C) visits the village of Odzun in Lori
province, July 20, 2019.
President Armen Sarkissian on Friday urged Armenia’s leading political actors
to exercise restraint in their heated debates on judicial reforms planned by
the government and other major issues.
“I am hopeful that the ongoing and future developments will not only promote
the efficiency of the judicial reforms but also the improvement of all areas of
the state and public administration, mutual understanding and broader
cooperation between the public and the authorities,” he said in a written
address to the nation.
“We need to realize that not only the goal is important but also the means to
achieve it,” read the carefully worded statement. “Let’s make disagreements and
problems the topic of our discussions but never the individuals.”
“In order to move forward, often it is expedient to take a little break, to
muse once again over the task ahead,” added Sarkisian, who has largely
ceremonial powers. “Let’s realize that today we need unity, stability, ability
to see the future, a vision as well as concrete programs.”
The head of state appeared to allude to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
deepening dispute with Armenia’s Constitutional Court and its chairman, Hrayr
Tovmasian, in particular.
Pashinian launched a scathing attack on Tovmasian in an interview with RFE/RL’s
Armenian service last week. He accused Tovmasian of cutting political deals
with former President Serzh Sarkisian to “privatize” the country’s highest
court through constitutional amendments that took effect in April 2018.
“The Constitutional Court must get out of this status of a privatized booth,”
the premier said, implicitly demanding changes in the court’s composition. In
that regard, he did not exclude that his administration will initiate
constitutional changes in order to “resolve the situation around the
Constitutional Court.”
Tovmasian, who previously served as a senior lawmaker representing Sarkisian’s
Republican Party (HHK), rejected the harsh criticism as offensive and baseless.
He warned the Armenian government against trying to force him and other members
of the court to resign.
Pashinian also signaled support for Vahe Grigorian, the Constitutional Court’s
newest judge elected by the Armenian parliament in June. Citing the amended
constitution, Grigorian has challenged the legitimacy of Tovmasian and six
other members of the court appointed before the “Velvet Revolution” of
April-May 2018.
Grigorian’s stance has been backed by some of Pashinian’s political allies but
strongly condemned by opposition politicians, notably senior HHK figures. The
latter have also accused President Sarkissian of turning a blind eye to what
they see as illegal government pressure on courts.
In his statement, Sarkissian said he is “following closely numerous pronounced
statements, opinions, viewpoints, appeals to act, and appeals regarding these
appeals.” But he argued that the constitution bars him from “becoming part of
the ongoing dispute.”
Row Between Armenian, Karabakh Leaders ‘Settled’
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Nagorno-Karabakh -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (C), Karabakh
President Bako Sahakian (R) and Archbishop Pargev Martirosian leave a newly
built church in Stepanakert, May 9, 2019.
The leaders of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh have normalized their relations
following a recent public spat, a senior official in Yerevan insisted on Friday.
“The relationship between Yerevan and Stepanakert is in a very good state at
the moment,” said Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council.
“There were some problems but those problems are now a thing of the past.”
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian charged in May that unnamed “forces representing
the former corrupt system” are intent on provoking a war with Azerbaijan,
losing “some territories” and blaming that defeat on Armenia’s current
government. He effectively pointed the finger at Karabakh’s leadership.
In early June, Pashinian accused the authorities in Stepanakert of spreading
false claims about significant territorial concessions to Azerbaijan planned by
his government. Bako Sahakian, the Karabakh president, was quick to deny that.
The secretary of Sahakian’s national security council, Vitaly Balasanian, was
relieved of his duties a few days later. Balasanian had publicly scoffed at
Pashinian’s confidence-building understandings reached with Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev late last year. The remarks sparked a war of words
between Balasanian and Pashinian’s press secretary, Vladimir Karapetian.
The Armenian premier was also irked by a written petition by Sahakian and his
predecessor Arkadi Ghukasian which facilitated the release from prison on May
18 of Robert Kocharian, Armenia’s Karabakh-born former president facing coup
and corruption charges. Kocharian was arrested again on June 25.
Grigorian, who visited Stepanakert last week, declined to comment on the
“problems” between Yerevan and Stepanakert. “The problems have been talked
about in public and discussed during meetings,” he told reporters.
Grigorian also would not be drawn on the “treasonous” conspiracy alleged by
Pashinian. “Security bodies are dealing with that,” he said vaguely.
Armenian Government Evacuates Tourists Stranded In Egypt
• Susan Badalian
EGYPT -- Tourists enjoy their time off at the pool of a hotel in Red Sea resort
of Hurghada, January 9 2016.
Armenia’s government urgently hired a passenger jet on Friday to evacuate more
than 100 Armenian tourists stranded in an Egyptian Red Sea resort because of a
Yerevan-based travel agency.
The tourists were due to return to Armenia from the Hurghada resort on
Wednesday. However, their flight organized by the A & R Tour agency was
cancelled.
According to the Armenian Embassy in Egypt, A & R Tour failed to make a payment
to a Greek airline which was due to carry out the flight. Flights from Yerevan
to another popular Egyptian resort, Sharm el-Sheikh, arranged by the same
agency were also cancelled this week.
The government decided to pay the Greek airline Ogrange2Fly 47 million drams
(about $100,000) to bring the 130 or so stranded holidaymakers back to Armenia.
An Ogrange2Fly plane carrying them landed at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport on
Friday evening.
The payment also covers a second Hurghada-Yerevan flight which will be carried
out on Monday. According to a spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister Tigran
Avinian it will bring home more than 100 other A & R Tour customers whose
holidays end next week.
Scores of other Armenians, who have bought tour packages from the agency and
were due to travel to Egypt this week, remained in limbo. Some of them again
visited its Yerevan office to demand information or reimbursement for their
expenses. The office was closed, however.
One customer, Lianna Hovannisian, said she managed to talk to A & R Tour’s
director, Ani Aleksanian, by phone in the morning. “I asked her to give my
money back … She said their accountant will contact me. That hasn’t happened
yet,” Hovannisian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
Aleksanian’s lawyer, Arsen Mkrtchian, said she has filed a report to
law-enforcement authorities alleging that the flight disruptions resulted from
an obstruction of her agency’s activities. Mkrtchian did not elaborate on those
claims.
The Armenian police said, meanwhile, that they have launched a preliminary
investigation.
Press Review
“Zhoghovurd” comments on the decision by the European Court of Human Rights
(ECHR) to order Armenia to pay $1.8 million to Yuri Vartanian, a Yerevan
resident whose house and land were confiscated in 2005 as part of controversial
redevelopment projects overseen by then President Robert Kocharian. The paper
says the ruling is “exceptional” not least because the sum exceeds the total
amount of all other compensations paid by the Armenian authorities in line with
similar ECHR judgments. “And secondly, the ECHR verdict names a concrete judge:
Arman Mkrtumian, the former chairman of the Court of Cassation,” it says.
“Ask the second president [Kocharian] and his courtiers about what they think
of the construction of [Yerevan’s] Northern Avenue,” “Aravot” writes on the
same subject. “They will speak of that process with pride: jobs, a construction
boom, full refrigerators and so on. None of them will say that as a consequence
of the construction of that avenue, dozens of residents of central Yerevan were
left homeless. None of them will feel responsible for the fact that the ECHR
has ordered the government to pay 1.6 million euros to a citizen who had been
dispossessed as a result of their actions.”
“Haykakan Zhamanak” says that the key actors in political processes taking
place in Armenia are not politicians but mass media. The paper says another
specificity of the Armenian political scene is that parties are first and
foremost trying to undercut their rivals, rather than boost their own approval
ratings, through media outlets controlled by them. It says that in many
countries the parties also give voters concrete promises and come up with
programs of fulfilling them. It says the former ruling Republican Party of
Armenia does not do this because it realizes that it stands no chance of
winning over most Armenians with a constructive agenda.
(Lilit Harutiunian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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