Tuesday,
Civic Groups Deplore Pashinian’s Reluctance To Hold Snap Elections
• Gayane Saribekian
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (C) talks to deputies from hs My Step
bloc during a parliament session, Yerevan, September 16, 2020.
Civic groups and activists strongly criticized Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
administration on Tuesday for deciding not to hold fresh parliamentary elections
to end the continuing political crisis in Armenia.
In a joint statement, ten Western-funded non-governmental organizations insisted
that such elections are “the only way to overcome the current crisis of trust”
in the Armenian government.
They charged that Pashinian and his team “place partisan interests above public
ones” and are therefore no different from the country’s former leadership
toppled in the “Velvet Revolution” of April-May 2018.
“A considerable part of the public has no confidence in the current authorities’
ability to not only cope with external and internal challenges brought about by
the war [in Nagorno-Karabakh] but also guarantee Armenia’s peaceful
development,” said the NGOs that had strongly supported the Pashinian-led
revolution.
Pashinian expressed readiness in late December to hold snap elections in the
coming months following opposition protests sparked by Armenia’s defeat in the
six-week war. Opposition forces have since continued to demand that the prime
minister hand over power to a new and interim government that would hold the
elections within a year.
In a weekend statement, Pashinian and his My Step bloc said they see no need for
snap polls now because of the opposition’s stance and what they described as a
lack of popular “demand.”
A leading member of the bloc, Alen Simonian, defended the apparent U-turn and
blamed the opposition for it on Tuesday.
“My Step could not hold elections arbitrarily. When the opposition demands
elections we will discuss that,” Simonian told reporters.
The NGO statement dismissed that explanation. “The claim that there is no
broad-based public support for pre-term elections is as manipulative as the
parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition’s claim that elections
organized by the current government will definitely be rigged,” it said.
Nina Karapetiants, a civil rights activist, likewise said that Pashinian and his
allies are using the opposition stance as an excuse not to dissolve the current
parliament controlled by them.
“They just realized that they would not get the votes that they got [in the last
elections] … I’m sure that the current authorities would not get even a quarter
of those votes,” Karapetiants told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Pashinian’s bloc garnered over 70 percent of the vote in the elections held in
December 2018.
New Head Of Armenian High Court Elected
• Tatevik Lazarian
Armenia - Judge Lilit Tadevosian addresses parliament before being elected as
new head of Armenia's Court of Cassation, February 9, 2021.
The Armenian parliament elected on Tuesday a 42-year-old senior judge and former
prosecutor as head of the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest body of
criminal and administrative justice.
The new court chairwoman, Lilit Tadevosian, was backed by 102 members of the
132-seat National Assembly, among them opposition parliamentarians. Her
predecessor, Yervand Khundkarian, became a member of Armenia’s Constitutional
Court in September.
Tadevosian was nominated for the vacant post by the Supreme Judicial Council
(SJC), an independent body monitoring Armenian courts.
Tadevosian worked as a prosecutor before taking the bench in 2012. In 2016, then
President Serzh Sarkisian appointed her as a Court of Cassation judge. She
became the head of the court’s Criminal Chamber in 2018.
Tadevosian emphasized the importance of judicial independence when she addressed
lawmakers before they voted in secret ballot to install her as court chairwoman.
“Independence and autonomy are inalienable characteristics of the judiciary to
which all branches of government and all strata of the society must contribute,”
she said.
Tadevosian was pressed by several pro-government lawmakers to comment on
Armenian judges’ systematic refusal to allow the pre-trial arrests of opposition
figures and other activists trying to topple Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
government over its handling of the recent war with Azerbaijan. She pointedly
declined to criticize those judges.
“If I don’t avoid, as you put it, answering your questions today I will have to
avoid administering justice on those cases tomorrow,” explained Tadevosian.
“That’s not what I am standing here for. Justice will not be administered here.”
Lilit Makunts, the parliamentary leader of Pashinian’s My Step bloc, hailed her
stance.
Tadevosian also drew praise from Edmon Marukian, the leader of the opposition
Bright Armenia Party, for not “commenting on political processes from the number
one podium.”
Vladimir Vartanian, the chairman of the parliament committee on legal affairs,
stressed the fact that Tadevosian will be the first woman to head an Armenian
high court. “If we want revolutionary changes we must take this fact into
account as well,” he said.
Kocharian Wants Deeper ‘Integration’ With Russia
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- Members of a newly created movement seeking Armenia's closer ties
with Russia rally in Yerevan, February 6, 2021.
Former President Robert Kocharian has again called for Armenia’s deeper
“integration” with Russia in remarks publicized during his latest visit to
Moscow.
“We need to speak of serious integration,” Kocharian told the Russian Sputnik
news agency in an interview published over the weekend. “A regionalization of
the world is underway. Global processes are giving way to some regional
integration processes.”
“In this regard, I believe that Armenia should very seriously think about deeper
interaction with Russia. A much deeper one that exists now,” he said without
elaborating.
Kocharian already made a case for closer ties with Russia in early December. He
insisted that only Moscow can help Armenia rebuild its armed forces and confront
new security challenges in the aftermath of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced on New Year’s Eve plans to further
deepen the Russian-Armenian relationship, saying that his country needs “new
security guarantees” now. Pashinian reaffirmed those plans at a January 11
meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia -- Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian, Moscow, January 11, 2021.
Similar statements have also been made by other Armenian politicians. Edmon
Marukian, who leads one of the two opposition parties represented in the
Armenian parliament, called in late December for the opening of a second Russian
military base in the South Caucasus state.
On February 6 a group of fringe parties and politicians held in Yerevan the
founding congress of a new movement that will campaign for a “new union” of
Armenia and Russia.
Commenting on these developments, Hakob Badalian, a political analyst, suggested
that Armenian political actors are increasingly vying for Moscow’s support in
their domestic political struggle. He noted a lack of specifics in their
pro-Russian discourse.
“One gets the impression that they are offering their services to Russia,”
Badalian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Namely, [they are competing to
demonstrate] who will better serve Russia and who will offer Armenia’s deeper
subordination to Russia, and in return for that expect Russian support in terms
of solving Armenia’s political issues.”
Badalian said that Kocharian is particularly keen to secure such support for his
bid to return to power. He said Russian influence in Armenia has grown
significantly since the Karabakh war and Moscow is not averse to expanding it
further.
Armenian Tech Sector Keeps Growing Despite Recession
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- Young people at the annual Digitec Expo exhibition in Yerevan,
October 6, 2018.
Armenia’s technology sector continued to grow rapidly last year despite a
recession primarily caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Minister of High-Tech
Industry Hakob Arshakian said on Tuesday.
“The combined turnover of [tech] companies rose by 20.6 percent to about 198
billion drams ($380 million),” Arshakian told a news conference.
“Please note that this includes only high-tech industry companies and doesn’t
include telecom operators,” he said.
The total number of such firms reached 1,228 in 2020, Arshakian went on. The
number of their officially registered employees jumped by 22 percent to 18,747,
he said.
Many of them work for local subsidiaries of U.S. tech giants like Synopsys,
National Instruments, Mentor Graphics and VMware. A growing number of other
information technology (IT) engineers are employed by Armenian startups and
other homegrown firms.
In Arshakian’s words, 192 new IT firms qualified last year for tax breaks that
were first introduced by Armenia’s former government in 2015. Local startups
also attracted $50 million in mostly foreign investments, added the minister.
Armenia -- Minister of High-Tech Industry Hakob Arshakian speaks at a news
conference, February 9, 2021.
The official figures cited by him contrast sharply with the country’s overall
macroeconomic performance. The Armenian economy contracted by an estimated 8
percent in 2020 mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The six-week war in
Nagorno-Karabakh, which broke out in late September, also contributed to the
significant decline in economic activity.
The Armenian tech industry dominated by software companies appears to be the
only sector of the domestic economy practically unaffected by the recession. It
has been growing at double-digit annual rates for more than a decade.
According to Arshakian, the sector’s average monthly wage rose from almost
544,000 drams in 2019 to over 580,000 drams ($1,113) in 2020. The nationwide
average wage stood at less than 190,000 drams.
Despite their continuing rapid growth, local IT companies generated less than 3
percent of the Armenian government’s 2020 tax revenues. Arshakian said the total
amount of taxes paid by them exceeded 41 billion drams. Armenia’s largest mining
company, the Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC), contributed roughly the
same sum to the state budget.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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