World Markets Research Center
Global Insight
May 28, 2008
President Continues to Readjust Armenian Government
by Natalia Leshchenko
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has dismissed a key security
official, Grigori Sarkisian, from the position of head of the State
Protection Service. No official reason for the dismissal was given
either by the government or Sarkisian himself, who pledged loyalty to
the president. In another development, three members of the cabinet
from the Dashnaktsutyun party, Agriculture Minister David Lokian,
Labour and Social Affairs Minister Aghvan Vartanian, and Education
Minister Levon Mkrtchian, have resigned following the party congress,
allegedly for personal reasons, to be replaced by other members of the
party, who have not yet been named. In the meantime, the only
opposition party represented in the parliament, Zharangutyun of Raffi
Hovannisian, has rejected the governmental proposal to head their
choice of one of the three newly created parliamentary
committees–agriculture, social affairs, and local government.
Significance:The changes in Armenia’s ruling circles reflect the
adjustment of the political players to the transfer of power from
former president Robert Kocharian to his ally Serzh Sargsyan in March
this year, which involved some serious public protests. One
explanation of the security chief’s sacking attributes his dismissal
to the harsh repression of the post-presidential election protests on
1 March in which eight people died, although a more probable reason is
a personal rift between Sarkisian and the new president’s chief of
security Vache Ghazarian. Political parties are in the meantime
seeking to find their feet, with Zharangutyun apparently wishing to
preserve its distance from the government and thus undermine the
president’s claim to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe that his government embraces the full political spectrum of
Armenia.