Friday,
Opposition Alliance Vows More Efforts To Topple Pashinian
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
ARMENIA - Opposition demonstrators react while listening to a speaker during a
rally to pressure Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to resign in Yerevan,
December 22, 2020
Opposition leaders promised on Friday more efforts to force Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian to resign as they began touring Armenia’s regions in a bid to drum up
greater support for their campaign.
The two leaders representing a coalition of more than a dozen opposition parties
met hundreds of supporters in Gyumri at the start of the tour. They admitted
that protests staged by their Homeland Salvation Front following the
Russian-brokered ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh failed to attract large crowds.
“I thought that that there are one million people in Yerevan and they all will
take to the streets because they were humiliated, but people were so depressed
and aggrieved … I know many people who cry at home but don’t bother to come out.
We have a lot to do about that,” said Vazgen Manukian, a veteran politician who
has been nominated by the opposition alliance to serve as a caretaker prime
minister.
“Many people sitting at home are urging us to act more resolutely,” complained
Ishkhan Saghatelian of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), a
key member of the alliance.
“People must take to the streets, organize themselves and oust this government.
There is no other option,” he said, adding that the alliance will also keep
pressing pro-government lawmakers to stop supporting Pashinian.
Armenia - Opposition leaders Vazgen Manukian and Ishkhan Saghatelian meet with
supporters in Gyumri, .
“That Nikol will leave is a fact … He won’t avoid that. The question is when he
will do that,” claimed Saghatelian.
The parties making up the alliance as well as other opposition groups hold
Pashinian responsible for Armenia’s defeat in the recent war in Karabakh and
want him to hand over power to an interim government that would hold snap
parliamentary elections by the end of this year.
The prime minister has rejected the opposition demands backed by President Armen
Sarkissian. He has dismissed the street protests against his rule as an “elite
revolt” not backed by most Armenians.
A group of Pashinian supporters blocked a highway outside Gyumri in a bid to bar
Manukian, Saghatelian and other opposition figures from entering Armenia’s
second largest city. Police intervened to unblock the road.
Manukian, who had served as the country’s prime minister and defense minister in
the early 1990s, labeled the protesters as “tramps” hired by Pashinian’s My Step
bloc for cash.
Russian Security Council Discusses Armenian-Azeri Summit
Russia -- Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a video conference with members
of Russia's Security Council, .
President Vladimir Putin on Friday discussed with Russia’s top government and
security officials the latest talks between the leaders of Armenia and
Azerbaijan which he hosted earlier this week.
The Kremlin said Putin briefed members of his Security Council on the results of
the January 11 talks held two months after he brokered a ceasefire agreement
that stopped the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Pressing issues of the Russian state’s internal and foreign policies were also
discussed,” it added in a short statement.
The statement gave no other details of Putin’s video conference with Russia’s
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, defense, foreign and interior ministers, other
top security officials and the speakers of both houses of the Russian parliament.
Putin, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev announced after their trilateral meeting that their governments will set
up a joint “working group” that will deal with practical modalities of restoring
transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Russian leader said that
“will benefit both the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples and the region as a
whole.”
Pashinian and Aliyev failed to reach agreement on the release of more than a
hundred Armenian prisoners of war and civilians remaining in Azerbaijani
captivity. Yerevan says that Baku’s reluctance to free them runs counter to the
truce accord brokered by Putin and calls into question the planned reopening of
the Armenian-Azerbaijani border for commerce.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun
Bayramov discussed the issue in a phone call on Friday. Lavrov spoke with
Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazian by phone on Wednesday.
Another Provincial Governor Resigns
• Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Armenia -- Tigran Petrosian, the newly appointed governor of Shirak region,
holds a news conference in Gyumri, February 7, 2019
The governor of Armenia’s northwestern Shirak province, Tigran Petrosian,
tendered his resignation on Friday after almost two years in office.
Petrosian gave no reasons for the move. Officials in the provincial
administration said he will not comment before the resignation is accepted by
the Armenian government.
Petrosian, 41, has governed Shirak since February 2019. He is not affiliated
with any political party.
The government replaced three other provincial governors following a
Russian-brokered Armenian-Azerbaijani agreement that stopped the war in
Nagorno-Karabakh on November 10. Two of them are senior members of Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party who were told to resign.
The third, non-partisan governor, Hunan Poghosian, appeared to have quit at his
own initiative. Poghosian ran southeastern Syunik province directly affected by
the war.
The Armenian side’s defeat in the war sparked opposition protests and growing
calls for Pashinian’s resignation. The prime minister has refused to step down,
pledging instead to reshuffle his cabinet and offering to hold snap
parliamentary elections. He replaced six government ministers in late November
and early December.
Parliament Panel To Probe Government’s Response To COVID-19
ARMENIA -- A woman wearing a face mask walks is seen against the backdrop of the
main government building in Yerevan, June 2, 2020.
The pro-government majority in the National Assembly has given the green light
to a parliamentary inquiry into the Armenian government’s response to the
coronavirus pandemic demanded by the opposition.
The two parliamentary opposition parties, Prosperous Armenia (BHK) and Bright
Armenia (LHK), called for such an inquiry in June as they accused the government
of mishandling the coronavirus crisis.
Senior lawmakers representing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s My Step bloc
initially opposed the move, defending the authorities’ response to the pandemic.
But they reluctantly agreed afterwards to the creation of an ad hoc
parliamentary commission tasked with assessing the effectiveness of government
efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19.
Arkadi Khachatrian, a senior LHK parliamentarian, announced late on Thursday
that parliament speaker Ararat Mirzoyan has formally approved the commission’s
composition and thus paved the way for the start of its activities.
“The date and time of the first meeting of the investigative commission will be
announced in the coming days,” Khachatrian wrote on Facebook.
Although the commission will be headed by Khachatrian, eight of its twelve
members have been appointed by My Step. Khachatrian expressed hope that its
findings will be “objective and comprehensive” and will answer all “questions
preoccupying the public.”
Armenia has been hit hard by the pandemic, with nearly 164,000 coronavirus cases
officially confirmed in the country of about 3 million so far. The real number
of cases is believed to be much higher.
The Armenian Ministry of Health reported on Friday that 11 more people have died
from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 2,974.
The figure does not include the deaths of 726 other Armenians infected with the
virus. According to the ministry, they were primarily caused by other diseases.
The authorities largely stopped fining people and businesses to enforce their
anti-epidemic rules following the September 27 outbreak of the war in
Nagorno-Karabakh. The daily number of new COVID-19 infections reported by them
grew rapidly as a result. But it has fallen significantly since mid-November.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.