Author: Anna Tamamian

                                        Friday, 

Opponents Threaten Legal Action Against Yerevan Mayor

        • Gayane Saribekian

Armenia - Hayk Marutian is inaugurated as mayor of Yerevan, October 13, 2018.

Opposition members of the Yerevan city council on Friday threatened to sue 
Mayor Hayk Marutian if he refuses to release details of bonuses paid to about 
2,000 municipal officials late last month.

Marutian allocated a total of 1.2 billion drams ($2.5 billion) for the yearend 
financial rewards to the employees of his office and the administrations of 
Yerevan’s ten districts.

The opposition Luys alliance wants him to name those officials and specify the 
amounts of bonuses paid to each of them. The mayor has so far refused to 
disclose such information on the grounds that it may constitute a privacy 
violation.

The Luys leader, Davit Khazhakian, condemned that stance, saying that it runs 
counter to an Armenian law on local self-government in the capital. “If the 
matter is not solved we will be ready to appeal to the administrative court,” 
he warned.

Khazhakian suggested that the municipal authorities may be worried about 
negative public reactions to the disclosure demanded by Luys.

One of Marutian’s deputies, Hayk Sargsian, brushed aside Khazhakian’s claims. 
He said the mayor’s office has asked the Armenian Ministry of Justice to advise 
whether details of the bonuses can be made public.

“I can say that the mayor did not receive a bonus,” Sargsian told RFE/RL’s 
Armenian service. “I want to make clear that we are not worried about anything. 
Why? Because we are open and transparent.”


Armenia - Mayor Hayk Marutian chairs a session of Yerevan's municipal council, 
December 21, 2018.

Luys controls only three seats in Yerevan’s 65-member municipal council, 
compared with 57 seats held by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s My Step 
alliance.

Marutian, 42, is a close ally of Pashinian. The council appointed the former TV 
comedian as mayor after last September’s municipal elections in which My Step 
won 80 percent of the vote.

Khazhakian and the two other Luys councilors have repeatedly criticized 
Marutian. In particular, they accused him of failing to improve garbage 
collection and address the dismal state of public transport in the city.

Marutian and his team have dismissed the criticism. They claim to have already 
rooted out corruption in the municipal administration, which is thought to have 
been widespread under the previous mayors.



Government Body Stands By Corruption Claims

        • Naira Nalbandian

Armenia - Davit Sanasarian, the head of the State Oversight Service, at a news 
conference in Yerevan, .

A senior Armenian government official insisted on Friday that the 
administration of Yerevan State University (YSU) is responsible for financial 
irregularities worth at least 800 million drams ($1.6 million).

The State Oversight Service (SOS) subordinate to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian 
first made these claims last month after looking into financial records of 
Armenia’s largest and oldest university mostly financed by the government. It 
sent its findings to prosecutors for further investigation.

Nobody has been charged in connection with those allegations so far.

The YSU rector, Aram Simonian, angrily denied the accusations as baseless and 
politically motivated late last month. He linked them with his long-standing 
membership in former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK).

Simonian came under strong pressure to step down after mass protests led by 
Pashinian forced Sarkisian into resignation in April. The rector has refused to 
quit.

The SOS chief, Davit Sanasarian, dismissed Simonian’s statements, saying that 
his agency did conduct an objective “examination.”

“I wouldn’t advise current or former officials to follow Aram Simonian’s 
example and immediately claim that they see political persecution and so on,” 
Sanasarian told a news conference. “Whether they are from the HHK, 
[Pashinian’s] Civil Contract or any other party, they must be equal before the 
law and held answerable.”

“I can assure you that if that examination lasted longer those figures 
[relating to financial abuses] would be much higher,” he said.

Another senior SOS official, Davit Aydian, said the bulk of the alleged 
financial abuses detected by the government body resulted from procurement and 
construction tenders administered by the YSU management. The winners of those 
tenders did not submit the lowest bids, he claimed.



Moscow Again Slams Azeri Travel Ban On Russian Armenians

        • Aza Babayan

ITALY -- Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Foreign Ministry 
spokeswoman Maria Zakharova at a press conference in Milan, December 7, 2018.

Russia again demanded on Friday that Azerbaijan stop barring Russian citizens 
of Armenian descent from visiting the South Caucasus country, saying that the 
practice is “incompatible with friendly relations between the two countries.”

“We have repeatedly raised this issue with the Azerbaijani side and said that 
such instances are becoming a tradition, a bad and wrong tradition,” said Maria 
Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.

“In our view, such facts constitute a blatant violation of the rights of 
Russian citizens,” Zakharova told a news briefing in Moscow.

“The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly brought the Azerbaijani side’s 
attention to the unacceptability of the existing situation. We have demanded an 
end to detentions and expulsions.The practice is incompatible with friendly 
ties between the two countries.”

The Azerbaijani government has long maintained a travel ban for not only 
Armenia’s citizens but also ethnic Armenians from other countries because of 
the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It considers any Armenian presence on 
Azerbaijani soil a security risk and an affront to the country’s honor and 
territorial integrity.

According to Zakharova, in 2018 there were at least 16 cases of Russian 
nationals denied entry to Azerbaijan “on ethnic grounds.”

The most recent of them was reported late last month. Kristina Gevorkyan, an 
ethnic Armenian holder of a Russian passport, said that she was held in 
detention at Baku’s Heydar Aliyev international airport for 13 hours before 
being deported to Russia.

Moscow already publicly denounced the practice in July 2017. Reacting to that 
criticism, an Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman cited continuing “Armenian 
occupation” of Azerbaijani territory.

“Unfortunately, some ethnic Armenian individuals display ethnically motivated 
hostility, and that is why we take certain measures,” he said at the time.

Incidentally, Russia’s longtime Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was born to an 
ethnic Armenian father. Lavrov visits Baku on a regular basis.

The Azerbaijani ban also applies to presumed or actual ethnic Armenians from 
Turkey, Azerbaijan’s closest ally. In 2014, a Turkish arm-wrestler called Zafer 
Noyan was reportedly barred from entering Azerbaijan and participating in a 
major competition there because of his last name which officials at the Baku 
airport felt is Armenian. Noyan was forced to flow back to Istanbul despite his 
assurances that he is not of Armenian origin.



Opposition Parties Want Parliament Panel On Eurasian Union

        • Astghik Bedevian

Armenia - Empty seats in the Armenian parliament, Yerevan, December 4, 2018.

The two opposition parties represented in the newly elected National Assembly 
called on Friday for the creation of a new parliament committee that would deal 
with Armenia’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

The Prosperous Armenia (BHK) and Bright Armenia parties cited different 
considerations for having such a committee.

“The authorities have no intention to pull out of the EEU and we should try to 
use that membership to the benefit of the country,” said Bright Armenia leader 
Edmon Marukian, who called for Armenia’s withdrawal from the Russian-led trade 
bloc as recently as a year ago.

“We think that we need a parliamentary platform for dealing with problems which 
we mentioned when calling for withdrawal from the EEU and new problems which 
emerge every day,” Marukian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am).

The BHK, for its part, believes that the committee should address Armenia’s 
relations with not only Russia and other EEU member states but also neighboring 
Georgia and Iran. Mikael Melkumian, a senior BHK parliamentarian, said leaders 
of the incoming parliament majority loyal to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian 
have signaled support for its establishment.

The new National Assembly will start its inaugural session on January 14. One 
of its first tasks is to determine the number and the names of standing 
parliament committees.

BHK deputies are expected to chair two of those committees. Another panel 
should be headed by a representative of Bright Armenia.

The former Armenian parliament had nine committees. One of them was tasked with 
facilitating Armenia’s “European integration.” According to Lena Nazarian, a 
senior member of Pashinian’s My Step alliance, that panel will continue to 
exist.

Marukian, Pashinian and another prominent politician co-headed the now defunct 
Yelk alliance that campaigned for Armenia’s withdrawal from the EEU in late 
2017. Pashinian has favored Armenia’s continued membership in the bloc since he 
came to power in May.

"We are committed to further integration within the Eurasian Economic 
Union and treat seriously our chairmanship in the EEU," Pashinian said during a 
meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on December 27.



Press Review



“Haykakan Zhamanak” says that the 10 percent rise in the price of Russian 
natural gas imported by Armenia will have an impact on the Armenia economy 
despite government assurances that internal gas prices will remain the same. 
The paper disagrees with those who blame the price hike on last spring’s 
“velvet revolution” that brought Nikol Pashinian to power. It argues that the 
most recent Russian-Armenian agreement on the gas price was always supposed to 
run until December 31, 2018.

“As regards Russian-Armenian relations, we need allies, not sponsors, and in 
this sense the abolition of sponsorship only helps to create truly allied 
relations [between the two countries,]” concludes the paper edited by 
Pashinian’s wife, Anna Hakobian.

“Aravot” wonders if former journalists elected to the new Armenian parliament 
on the ticket of Pashinian’s My Step alliance will abandon skepticism 
characteristic of their profession and only sing the current government’s 
praises. “If they continue not to take everything at face value, then kudos to 
them,” editorializes the paper. It says that in the past 28 years many decent 
individuals have lost their sense of humor and become arrogant after entering 
politics. “In purely visual terms, most of the deputies of the newly elected 
National Assembly look more likeable than their predecessors,” it says. “It is 
essential that their brains do not get covered by thick layers of fat. That 
would reflect negatively on their appearance as well.”

Eduard Sharmazanov, the spokesman for the former ruling Republican Party of 
Armenia (HHK), tells Lragir.am that former President Serzh Sarkisian should 
continue to lead the HHK. Sharmazanov also says that the HHK will make other 
changes in its leadership at an upcoming congress in Yerevan. The online 
publication says that many HHK figures are opposed to Sarkisian’s possible 
replacement by former Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian, who topped the party’s 
list of candidates in the December 9 parliamentary elections.

(Lilit Harutiunian)




Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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