Wednesday,
Armenian Government Seeks To Speed Up COVID-19 Vaccination
Armenia - A woman receives a coronavirus vaccine at an open-air vaccination site
in Yerevan, May 7, 2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other senior officials discussed on Wednesday
ways of addressing a continuing lack of popular interest in the Armenian
government’s vaccination campaign against COVID-19 launched in April.
Pashinian complained that less than 3 percent of Armenia’s population has
received a first or second dose of a coronavirus vaccine in the last two and a
half months.
“As of now, we have about 80,000 vaccinated citizens, which is a very small
figure,” he said at the start of the meeting. “We must manage to solve this
issue. In order to raise this indicator to a proper level, a lot of work needs
to be done, first and foremost in the area of public relations.”
Pashinian sought to allay the population’s lingering fears of life-threatening
side-effects of the vaccines. He argued that none of the vaccinated Armenians
has died or had serious health problems so far.
Pashinian said the Ministry of Health and other government agencies must do more
to encourage people to get vaccinated.
According to a government statement on the meeting, he set specific vaccination
rate targets for the heads of those agencies.
The Armenian government has so far imported more than 200,000 doses of vaccines
manufactured by Russia, China and the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca.
The statement cited Health Minister Anahit Avanesian as saying that Armenia will
receive soon fresh batches of these and other vaccines. It did not give any
numbers.
Despite the very slow pace of vaccination and a continuing lax enforcement of
sanitary rules, the daily number of new coronavirus cases reported by the
Armenian Ministry of Health began steadily declining in mid-April and fell to
the lowest level in a year early this month.
The ministry said on Wednesday morning that 128 people tested positive for
COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, down from over 1,000 cases a day repeatedly
recorded in the country of about 3 million in the first half of April.
Gayane Sahakian, the deputy head of the ministry’s Center for Disease Control
and Prevention, warned last week that cases will likely soar again in the coming
weeks.
Armenian Governor Wants Pro-Opposition Village Chiefs To Resign
• Karine Simonian
Armenia - Lori Governor Aaram Khachatrian.
The governor of Armenia’s northern Lori province affiliated with the ruling
Civil Contract party on Wednesday demanded the resignation of elected heads of
local communities who supported opposition forces in the June 20 parliamentary
elections.
Speaking one week after being accused of ordering a physical assault on one of
those mayors, Aram Khachatrian claimed that Civil Contract’s victory in the snap
elections also amounted to a vote of no confidence in them. He also indicated
that some of them will face criminal charges soon.
“In my subjective view, these people must resign and again participate in
[local] elections to understand whether or not people trust them,” said
Khachatrian. “This is the only civilized path.”
During the 12-day election campaign Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian pledged to
wage “political vendettas” against local government officials supporting the
opposition. Shortly after the announcement of the election results, his chief of
staff, Arsen Torosian, effectively demanded that those officials step down.
Armenian media outlets reported in the following days that several provincial
governors, including Khachatrian, are summoning pro-opposition village mayors
and pressuring them to resign.
Arsen Titanian, the mayor of the Lori village of Odzun, claimed on June 23 to
have been beaten up by Khachatrian’s subordinates inside the provincial
administration building after telling the governor that he will not resign.
Armenia’s Special Investigative Service launched a criminal inquiry into the
reported incident, formally recognizing Titanian as a “victim.” But the
law-enforcement agency has not charged anyone so far.
Khachatrian again denied ordering the alleged beating of the village chief
supporting former President Robert Kocharian’s Hayastan alliance, the official
runner-up in the snap elections.
The heads of several other rural communities of Lori also backed Hayastan or
former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Pativ Unem bloc during the parliamentary
race. They include Mher Gevorgian, the longtime mayor of the village of
Gyulagarak and several smaller villages making up a single community.
Gevorgian made clear that although the ruling party scored a landslide victory
in his community he will not bow to the government pressure.
“Why should I resign?” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “I was elected by the
[local] people. If the people say, ‘Dear Mher, resign,’ I will resign. If not …
I will even run in the next [local] election.”
Odzun’s Titanian similarly reiterated that he intends to serve out his fourth
term in office which ends in autumn 2022.
Khachatrian, who was appointed as provincial governor by the central government,
claimed that at least some of the pro-opposition mayors tried to force local
residents not to vote for Pashinian’s party or attend its campaign rallies. They
will be held accountable soon, he said without naming anyone or giving other
details.
Meanwhile, the Union of Communities of Armenia, which represents the country’s
elected local administrations, condemned on Wednesday attempts to get rid of
dissident mayors as illegal and undemocratic.
“Local self-government bodies are not part of the central executive authority,”
the union’s chairman Emin Yeritsian, said in a statement. “They are not changed
as a result of parliamentary elections.”
Hayastan’s leadership condemned the government pressure last week.
Individuals linked to the opposition bloc run many towns and villages in
southeastern Syunik province. They demanded Pashinian’s resignation shortly
after Armenia’s defeat in the autumn war with Azerbaijan. At least three of them
were prosecuted on different charges in the following months.
Kocharian Predicts Another Snap Election
• Narine Ghalechian
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian (R) and senior members his Hayastan
alliance at an election campaign rally in Yerevan, June 9, 2021.
Former President Robert Kocharian said late on Tuesday that the June 20
parliamentary elections did not end the post-war political crisis in Armenia and
that another snap vote will have to be held by the end of next year.
“The crisis cannot be deemed resolved because the team that caused the crisis
remains in power. In essence, the pre-term elections did not serve the purpose
of their conduct,” Kocharian said during a post-election conference of his
Hayastan (Armenia), the official runner-up in the polls won by Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party.
“This means that we won’t have answers [to the questions about] why we lost [the
war in Nagorno-Karabakh], why we suffered 5,000 casualties … Do you think that
in the absence of answers to these questions we can have internal political
solidarity and stability in Armenia? No, we can’t, we can’t,” he told hundreds
of Hayastan activists.
“My forecast is that we are very likely to have early elections in about one and
a half years from now,” he added in a speech.
A senior Civil Contract figure, Alen Simonian, dismissed Kocharian’s claims.
“His evaluations are based on his wishes and ideas,” Simonian told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service.
Simonian insisted that the serious crisis triggered by Armenia’s defeat in the
six-week war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November is over. “The
parliament was elected for a five-year term, and I think it’s wrong to make any
other forecast,” he said.
Kocharian again questioned the official election results which showed
Pashinian’s party winning about 54 percent of the vote, compared with 21 percent
polled by Hayastan. He reaffirmed his bloc’s decision to challenge them in
Armenia’s Constitutional Court.
Former President Serzh Sarkisian’s opposition Pativ Unem alliance, which
finished a distant third in the polls, also plans to appeal to the court.
Pashinian and his associates have described the elections as free and fair,
citing their largely positive assessment by local and international monitors.
Pashinian, who harshly criticized the two main opposition forces during the
election campaign, last week expressed readiness to embark on a “dialogue” with
his political opponents, citing “extremely serious” post-war challenges facing
the country.
But in a clear reference to the two ex-presidents, the prime minister also said
that they must “immediately” negotiate with his administration on “returning
what was stolen from the people” or risk a crackdown by law-enforcement
authorities.
Kocharian again construed that as a clear sign that Pashinian has no intention
to change his confrontational attitudes towards opposition forces and will
continue “persecuting” them. He said his bloc will be in “radical opposition” to
the current government.
“We will combine our parliamentary work with a fight in the streets and a fight
through the media,” he said.
The ex-president already indicated last week that Hayastan will likely take up
its 29 seats in Armenia’s new 107-member parliament if the official vote results
are upheld by the Constitutional Court.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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