Youth Wings Deepen Armenian Coalition Friction
By Nane Atshemian 22/11/2004 08:54
Radio Free Europe, Czech Rep.
Nov 22 2004
Leaders of the youth league of the Republican Party (HHK) publicly
castigated their counterparts from the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) on Friday, in a further sign of mounting
tensions between two key members of Armenia’s ruling coalition.
The young Republicans, who control student councils at virtually all
state-run universities, rejected Dashnaktsutyun allegations of
large-scale corruption in the Armenian system of higher education.
Leaders of Dashnaktsutyun’s Nikol Aghbalian student organization said
on Tuesday that an opinion poll which they conducted among over 1,000
students found a widespread perception of corrupt practices affecting
their studies. The State Medical University was rated as the most
corrupt, with 72 percent of respondents there saying that their
professors routinely take bribes to give high marks during admission
and other exams.
Nikol Aghbalian said they have also found that virtually no
professors and lecturers at the 11 universities have been fired for
bribery in recent years.
The accusations prompted an angry rebuttal from representatives of
the student councils that are mostly affiliated with the HHK and have
close ties with university rectors. Speaking at a news conference,
they dismissed the poll conducted by the Dashnak students as
fraudulent.
Armen Ashotian, the leader of the HHK’s youth wing and an aide to the
Medical University rector, claimed that the corruption allegations
are politically motivated. He also charged that Dashnaktsutyun has
links with private medical schools and wants to discredit his
university to benefit them. “We as well as some sections of the
public are well aware of that,” he said.
Robert Makarian, who heads the student council at the State
Agricultural Academy, said Nikol Aghbalian leaders have never raised
their grievances with the councils. “Dashnaktsutyun’s student union
is absolutely unaware of how students live and what their problems
are,” he said.
The accusations come amid increasingly tense relations between the
Republicans led by Prime Minister Andranik Markarian and their junior
coalition partners. Dashnaktsutyun and the third coalition party,
Orinats Yerkir, have been pushing for a major change in Armenia’s
electoral system that would increase the number of parliament seats
contested under the proportional system.
The HHK, on the other hand, has a vested in maintaining the 56 of the
131 seats distributed in individual constituencies. Its
uncompromising stance has led Dashnaktsutyun to threaten to pull out
of the coalition.
The news conference by the Republican student leaders also featured
verbal attacks on Education Minister Sergo Yeritsian, a senior member
of Orinats Yerkir. “Our education minister is dealing with anything
except student problems,” said Makarian.