Wednesday,
Karabakh Leader Wants Closer Ties With Russia
• Satenik Hayrapetian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets with Karabakh President Ara
Harutyunian, April 8, 2021
Forging closer ties with Russia is vital for Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh given
the outcome of last year’s with Azerbaijan, Ara Harutiunian, the Karabakh
president, said on Wednesday.
“I see the future of Armenia and Artsakh within the framework of new and deeper
military-political cooperation [with Russia,]” he said at a meeting in
Stepanakert. “Together with Russia we need to confront the new situation
because, as I said, Turkey is not going to leave the region.”
Harutiunian said that Turkey “participated in the war on the enemy’s side” and
also recruited thousands of Syrian mercenaries for the Azerbaijani army. This
was the main reason for Azerbaijan’s victory, he added.
The six-week hostilities stopped on November 10 after Russia brokered an
Armenian-Azerbaijani ceasefire agreement. As part of the agreement, Moscow
deployed around 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops along the new
Armenian-Azerbaijani “line of contact” and a land corridor connecting Karabakh
to Armenia.
Russian military presence in Armenia could also increase in the coming months.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian leaders have indicated that
they would welcome that.
“The Armenian-Russian military alliance is pivotal for ensuring the external
security of the Republic of Armenia,” Pashinian said on April 14.
Armenian opposition groups blame Pashinian for the Armenian side’s defeat. Some
of them have said that he would have reduced Armenian territorial losses had he
agreed to an earlier ceasefire deal that was proposed by Russian President
Vladimir Putin on October 19.
Harutiunian seemed to defend Pashinian against the criticism. He said that
already in early October it was clear that the Armenian side is heading for
defeat but that the war was not stopped then because of a lack of “consensus”
among Armenia’s ruling and opposition forces.
“At that point they seemed to consider stopping the war treason,” he said in an
apparent reference to the opposition.
Some opposition figures, including a representative of the former ruling
Republican Party of Armenia, responded by accusing Harutiunian of trying to help
Pashinian dodge responsibility for his handling of the war.
Ruling Bloc Criminalizes ‘Election Campaign Obstruction’
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia -- Deputies from the ruling My Step bloc attend a session of the
Armenian parliament, Yerevan, January 22, 2021.
One week after angry protests marred Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s visit to
Syunik province, the Armenian parliament voted on Wednesday to criminalize
obstruction of election campaigns.
The measure is part of a package of legal amendments which the pro-government
majority in the National Assembly says will help to prevent serious
irregularities in the run-up to and during snap parliamentary elections expected
in June.
The amendments call for heavier fines and lengthier prison sentences for vote
buying, election-related violence and disruption of the electoral process. They
also introduce criminal liability for attempts to impede pre-election activities
of political parties or their individual candidates.
This includes forcing people not to attend campaign rallies or agitate for a
particular election contender. Individuals convicted of such offenses would face
up to three years in prison.
“If anyone tries to impede an election campaign they will be subjected to
criminal prosecution,” said Vahagn Hovakimian, a senior deputy from Pashinian’s
My Step bloc and the main author of the bill which pro-government lawmakers
urgently passed in the first and second readings.
The bill calls for a longer jail term (up to five years) for anyone who would
pay voters to attend or boycott a pre-election rally.
Ani Samsonian, a deputy representing the opposition Bright Armenia Party (LHK),
criticized the bill, saying that it could be used to penalize the opposition.
“The opposition has no levers to coerce people to make donations to its campaign
fund,” argued Samsonian. By contrast, she said, My Step is in a position to
pressure businesspeople to finance its election campaign.
The ruling political force pushed the bill through the parliament one week after
Pashinian visited Syunik and faced protests by local residents blaming him for
Armenia’s defeat in last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh which has directly affected
their communities.
Dozens of angry men swore at the prime minister and branded him a “capitulator”
as he walked through the provincial towns of Agarak and Meghri on April 21.
Pashinian’s motorcade was pelted with eggs as it drove through another Syunik
community, Goris, later that day.
Pashinian condemned the incidents as a “violation of the law” before
law-enforcement authorities rounded up more than two dozen people and charged
them with hooliganism and/or violent resistance to police. Armenia’s
Investigative Committee said the “hooligan acts” were organized by
opposition-linked local government officials the purpose of hampering
Pashinian’s “movements and meetings with the population.”
Some critics of the Armenian government claim that Pashinian himself broke the
law by trying to hold pre-election rallies before the official start of
campaigning for the snap polls. They similarly accused Pashinian of illegal
campaigning after he visited villages in two other regions and held rallies
there late last month. The premier’s political allies deny any connection
between those visits and the upcoming vote.
It remains to be seen whether President Armen Sarkissian will sign the latest
bill into law. In recent weeks Sarkissian has challenged the legality of
government-backed legislation that would tighten government control of state
universities, give more powers to a state body overseeing the Armenian judiciary
and triple maximum fines for defamation.
Armenia To Import More COVID-19 Vaccines
• Narine Ghalechian
UKRAINE -- A medical worker shows a vial with the Chinese-developed CoronaVac
vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a clinic in Kyiv, April
15, 2021
Armenia will receive soon fresh batches of coronavirus vaccines even though most
of its residents are still in no rush to take them, a senior government official
said on Wednesday.
Gayane Sahakian, the deputy director of the Armenian Center for Disease Control
and Prevention, said they will be delivered by COVAX Facility, a global
vaccine-sharing scheme supported by the World Health Organization.
Sahakian did not specify the volume of the upcoming deliveries. She said only
that the Armenian government will import different types of vaccines, including
the CoronaVac jab manufactured by the Chinese company Sinovac.
COVAX already airlifted 24,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to
Yerevan on March 28. Armenia also received 43,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V
vaccine in the following weeks.
The Armenian Ministry of Health launched its vaccination campaign on April 13,
initially targeting only frontline workers, seniors and people suffering from
chronic diseases.
Armenia - Gayane Sahakian, the deputy director of the Armenian Center for
Disease Control and Prevention, at a news conference in Yerevan,
Sahakian said just over 2,000 Armenians making up less than 0.1 percent of the
country’s population have been vaccinated so far. She seemed to downplay the
slow pace of the vaccination, saying that the daily number of people getting
AstraZeneca or Sputnik V shots is growing by around 5 percent.
“No serious health problems have been registered among vaccinated people,” the
official told a news conference.
In an apparent effort to speed up the vaccination campaign, Health Minister
Anahit Avanesian allowed medical workers late last week to administer
AstraZeneca shots to all people willing to take them. Avanesian said earlier
that the use-by date of the first batch of the vaccine supplied by COVAX is May
31.
The lack of public interest in the vaccination contrasts with a continuing high
rate of coronavirus infections in the South Caucasus nation.
The Ministry of Health said on Wednesday morning that 808 people have tested
positive for COVID-19 in the past day. It also reported 13 new deaths caused by
the disease.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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