Monday,
Prosecutor Defends Pashinian’s Campaign Rhetoric
• Naira Nalbandian
ARMENIA -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian gives a speech during a
campaign rally in central Yerevan, June 17, 2021
A senior Armenian prosecutor insisted on Monday that Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian did not intimidate his political opponents or promise a violent
crackdown on them during the recent election campaign.
The prosecutor, Karen Bisharian, defended Pashinian’s fiery campaign rhetoric
during ongoing Constitutional Court hearings on opposition appeals against
official results of the June 20 elections that gave victory to the ruling Civil
Contract party.
The Hayastan bloc, one of the four opposition groups that lodged the appeals,
listed Pashinian’s “hate speech” and “calls for violence” among violations which
it says seriously affected the election outcome. The bloc’s representatives
argued, in particular, that Pashinian brandished a hammer during campaign
rallies held across the country.
Bisharian countered that the premier used the hammer only as a metaphor for a
“dictatorship of the law” promised by him on the campaign trail.
“Your Honor, I think it is clear that the context of these words was not about
violence,” he told the Constitutional Court judges. “Perhaps it was about
coercion … but not every coercion is violence.”
A Hayastan lawyer, Aram Vardevanian, cited Pashinian’s furious remarks addressed
to the management of Armenia’s largest mining company accused by the prime
minister of not allowing its workers to attend his rally held in the nearby town
of Kajaran.
“The Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC), you have crossed the red line,
which means that this blue hammer will first smash your heads. Whatever you say,
your fate is sealed, you just quietly wait for your verdict,” declared Pashinian.
Armenia - The Constitutional Court holds hearings on opposition appeals against
official results of the June 20 parliamentary elections, Yerevan,
Bisharian insisted that this was not a threat of or call for violence and that
the premier simply sought to defend voters’ freedom to choose a political force
preferred by him. The prosecutor admitted, though, that law-enforcement
authorities have not charged any ZCMC executive with threatening to fire workers
attending Pashinian’s rally.
During the election campaign Pashinian vowed to wage “political vendettas”
against local government officials supporting the opposition. “I promise you
that you will see those scumbag officials lying here on the asphalt,” he told
supporters in Kajaran.
Campaigning in Armenia’s Syunik province, Pashinian also pledged to “break their
[bank] accounts, destroy their firms and shove each of these criminal upstarts
into holes.”
The mayors of Kajaran and three other Syunik communities affiliated or linked
otherwise with Hayastan have been arrested over the past week on what they see
as politically motivated charges.
Armenia’s human rights defender, Arman Tatoyan, repeatedly criticized
Pashinian’s fiery rhetoric during the parliamentary race. Tatoyan deplored his
threats to “throw on the ground” and “bang against the wall” opposition
supporters who would try to illegally influence the election outcome.
“This unacceptable rhetoric is associated with mass violations of human rights,”
the ombudsman said on June 15.
Former Security Chief Gets New Post
• Nane Sahakian
Armenia - Argishti Kyaramian, the newly appointed head of Armenia's
Investigative Committee, .
A 30-year-old official who was sacked as head of Armenia’s National Security
Service (NSS) during last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh was named on Monday to
run another law-enforcement agency.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced Argishti Kyaramian’s appointment to the
top position in the Investigative Committee during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
Pashinian praised the track record of the committee’s previous head, Hayk
Grigorian, but did not give a clear reason for the decision to replace him.
Kyaramian took up his fifth senior state post during Pashinian’s rule. He worked
in the Office of the Prosecutor General and the State Revenue Committee before
becoming the acting head of an anti-corruption government body in 2019.
In June 2020, Pashinian appointed Kyaramian as director of the NSS despite the
fact that he had never worked in Armenia’s most powerful security service. He
was fired four months later, less than two weeks after the outbreak of the war
with Azerbaijan. No official reason was given for his sacking.
Pashinian solidified Kyaramian’s reputation as one of his trusted lieutenants
when he appointed the latter as deputy chief of the Investigative Committee last
December.
Opposition figures and other critics of the government claim that Kyaramian’s
main mission over the past year has been to oversee politically charged criminal
investigations.
Nina Karapetiants, a civil rights activist, complained that ever since coming to
power in 2018 Pashinian has rarely explained frequent personnel changes made by
him.
“How can they give this job to someone who was sacked as NSS director during the
war without an explanation?” she asked. “Is this latest appointment a reward or
punishment? Is Mr. Kyaramian irreplaceable or what? The public deserves to know
who was fired for what.”
Armenian Government Sets Ambitious Growth Targets
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - A construction site in Yerevan, July 2, 2021.
The Armenian government said on Monday that it expects the domestic economy to
expand by roughly 7 percent annually from 2022 to 2026.
The ambitious growth targets were set in a mid-term public spending plan
approved by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet at an extraordinary session
held behind the closed doors.
The move followed a significant upward revision of the government’s economic
growth target for this year. Pashinian said on July 1 that Armenia’s Gross
Domestic Product is now projected to increase by 6 percent.
The government had forecast earlier that the Armenian economy will grow by 3.2
percent in 2021 after shrinking by 7.6 percent last year due to the coronavirus
pandemic and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The World Bank offered a similar outlook in late March, saying that growth will
likely reach 3.4 percent this year and accelerate to 4.3 percent in 2022.
“The recovery will be slow; the economy is unlikely to return to pre-COVID
output levels until 2023,” the bank cautioned in a report.
The International Monetary Fund was less upbeat about Armenia’s short-term
growth prospects in its World Economic Outlook released in April.
In a statement, Pashinian’s government said rising investments anticipated by it
will be the main drivers of steady fast growth projected for the next five
years. It did not say whether the government hopes to attract most of those
investments from Armenian or foreign private investors or international
development agencies.
Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian said in this regard that the government will set
up three “industrial zones” in the country. He said two of them will mainly
cater for Iranian investors.
“Iranian companies are now showing a strong interest in relocating part of their
manufacturing facilities to Armenia,” Kerobian told journalists.
According to the government program, faster GDP growth will also translate into
a sizable rise in tax revenues. They are projected to increase from about 1.4
trillion drams ($2.8 billion) in 2020 to 2.1 trillion drams in 2024.
More Opposition Mayors Arrested In Armenia
• Susan Badalian
Armenia - Meghri community head Mkhitar Zakarian.
Law-enforcement authorities have arrested the heads of two more communities of
Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province in a continuing crackdown on local
leaders and supporters of the main opposition Hayastan alliance.
One of them, Mkhitar Zakarian, was taken into custody early on Monday three days
after resigning as mayor of the towns of Meghri and Agarak and several nearby
villages making up a single administrative unit.
The Investigative Committee said afterwards that he has been formally charged
with abuse of power and fraud. Zakarian rejected the accusations through his
lawyer, Yerem Sargsian.
Sargsian said Zakarian was manhandled by masked and heavily armed police
officers shortly after arriving, together with him, at a police department in
Yerevan. He said Zakarian was toppled to the ground, filmed and dragged away by
the officers despite not putting up any resistance.
The lawyer condemned the police actions as a gross violation of the due process
aimed at humiliating and intimidating his client.
Zakarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Saturday that he decided to step down
to make sure that his community and local government employees do not suffer
from fresh criminal proceedings launched against him.
“Employees of the community administration are constantly summoned to the
police,” he said.
Zakarian, who was elected to the National Assembly on the Hayastan ticket, also
said he decided to take up his seat in Armenia’s new parliament.
Also detained was Suren Ohanjanian, who runs the village of Vorotan, which is
part of another Syunik community comprising the town of Goris.
Ohanjanian is prosecuted in connection with financial aid allocated to 31
Vorotan residents from the community budget in early June. Prosecutors claim
that he told some of them to vote for Hayastan in the June 20 general elections.
The village chief’s brother flatly denied the allegation when he spoke with
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian speaks at an election campaign rally
held by his Hayastan alliance in Kapan, administrative center of Syunik
province, June 7, 2021.
Lusine Avetian, the head of another village close to Goris, was arrested a week
ago because of similar cash handouts given to several local residents. She too
denies trying to buy their votes.
A pro-opposition TV station based in Syunik showed one of those residents saying
over the weekend that police officers bullied his wife into giving false
incriminating testimony against Avetian. The man insisted that his family was
never told to back the opposition bloc which finished second in the elections.
Meanwhile, a court in Yerevan allowed law-enforcement authorities to hold the
mayor of another Syunik town, Kajaran, in detention pending investigation. The
mayor, Manvel Paramazian, was arrested on Thursday and charged afterwards with
vote buying and fraud.
Paramazian’s lawyer, Lusine Sahakian, said he rejects the accusations as
politically motivated.
Paramazian and Zakarian already faced other accusations before their arrests.
They as well as the head of the Goris municipality, Arush Arushanian, were among
the heads of more than a dozen Syunik communities who issued late last year
statements condemning Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s handling of the autumn
war with Azerbaijan and demanding his resignation.
Some of them encouraged supporters to disrupt Pashinian’s visit to Syunik in
December. The prime minister faced angry protests when he finally toured Goris,
Agarak, Meghri and the provincial capital Kapan in May.
Armenia - Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian brandishes a hammer at a
campaign meeting in Sisian, Syunik province, June 15, 2021.
The embattled Syunik mayors and a former provincial governor, Vahe Hakobian,
lead an opposition party affiliated with Hayastan. The opposition bloc headed by
former President Robert Kocharian last week condemned the continuing
“repressions” against its members and said that they will “further deepen the
political crisis” in Armenia.
During the election campaign Pashinian vowed to wage “political vendettas”
against local government officials supporting the opposition.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Kajaran, he said: “I promise you that you will
see those scumbag officials lying here on the asphalt.”
Pashinian repeatedly brandished on the campaign trail a hammer symbolizing a
popular “steel mandate” which he said will allow him to rule Armenia with a more
firm hand.
“With this thing we will be taking out those rusty nails, upstarts huddling in
various municipalities from many places, including this place,” he told
supporters in Sisian, another Syunik town run by an anti-Pashinian mayor.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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