Author: Suren Karakhanian

                                        Monday, 

Former Ruling Party To Run In Armenian Elections

        • Sisak Gabrielian

Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian and Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian arrive 
at a conference venue in Yerevan, 20Apr2017.

The former ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) has officially confirmed 
its participation in upcoming parliamentary elections and nominated former 
Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian as its top candidate.

The HHK announced the decision late on Sunday after a five-hour meeting of its 
governing board chaired by the party’s top leader, former President Serzh 
Sarkisian.

Sargsian told reporters that the board approved the list of the HHK’s election 
candidates that will be submitted to the Central Election Commission on 
Wednesday. He declined to publicize the list, saying only that it will be 
topped by him.

Sargsian also said that Serzh Sarkisian will not run as a candidate in the snap 
elections scheduled for December 9 despite remaining the party’s chairman. Nor 
will the former president be involved in the HHK’s election campaign, he said.

Sarkisian, 64, resigned in April amid mass protests triggered by his attempt to 
extend his decade-long rule. He has kept a very low profile since then, leaving 
it to his political allies to comment on political developments and 
occasionally challenge Nikol Pashinian, the protest leader elected prime 
minister in May.

The 43-year-old Vigen Sargsian is a U.S.-educated protégé of the ex-president 
who served as Armenia’s defense minister from 2016-2018. He was widely regarded 
as Serzh Sarkisian’s potential successor before the dramatic regime change in 
the country.

Most observers believe that the HHK is now too unpopular to pose a serious 
threat to Pashinian. Some of them say that it will struggle to win any seats in 
the new parliament.

Sargsian, who was elected the HHK’s first deputy chairman on Sunday, admitted 
that Pashinian’s alliance will almost certainly win the December elections.

“The upcoming elections will not determine who will be in power,” he said.“That 
question seems to have already been answered, and I think that the prime 
minister whom our fellow citizens rallying in the streets designated as the 
people’s candidate … will continue to perform his duties. He has something to 
prove … and we are prepared to hold him in check in the future parliament.”

Sargsian further declared that the HHK is aiming to finish second in the polls 
because it is now the sole genuinely opposition force in Armenia.

“I think that if Nikol Pashinian is sincere about his intention to build a new 
Armenia he will vote for the Republican Party when he finds himself alone in 
the polling booth,” claimed the former defense chief. “Because he should see no 
other alternatives in terms of his opponents in the future parliament. If he 
doesn’t do that, it will mean what he wants to have a puppet opposition.”

Pashinian accused the HHK and Serzh Sarkisian in particular of corruption, 
mismanagement and human rights abuses during the protest movement

The HHK won the last parliamentary elections held in April 2017, heavily 
relying on its administrative and financial resources. It was greatly helped by 
wealthy government-linked individuals accused by opposition forces and media of 
bribing and bullying voters. It is still not clear how many of them remain 
allied to the former ruling party.

Pashinian claimed last month that the HHK still counts on the backing of 
“criminal” local elites.




Pashinian Allies Dismiss Republicans’ Election Chances

        • Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenia - Supporters wave the ruling Republican Party's election campaign flags 
at a rally in Yerevan, 14Mar2017.

Former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK) is unlikely to win 
any seats in Armenia’s new parliament, political allies of Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian said on Monday.

HHK leaders acknowledged over the weekend that Pashinian’s Civil Contract party 
will almost certainly win the snap general elections slated for December 9. 
They said their party will be aiming for second place in the unfolding 
parliamentary race.

Two lawmakers representing Civil Contract dismissed those statements, 
predicting that the HHK will most probably not be represented in the next 
National Assembly at all.

“I insist that both the leader [Serzh Sarkisian] and the top candidate of the 
Republican Party … do not know the people of Armenia,” one of them, Alen 
Simonian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “And not knowing the people’s 
troubles and often times being the cause of those troubles, they can’t be 
perceived as opposition by me. I regard them as a bunch of revanchists.”

“I don’t consider any HHK’s presence in the [new] National Assembly realistic,” 
said Simonian. “They have already been present there. The people of Armenia 
have seen what happens when they run their country.”

Another Civil Contract lawmaker, Hrachya Hakobian, was even more categorical. 
“If they had rebranded themselves, if they had gotten rid of the HHK acronym 
some of their members might deserve to be in the parliament and might actually 
win parliament seats,” he said.

Civil Contract is expected to enter the race in an alliance with mainly 
non-partisan politicians, civic activists and other public figures supporting 
Pashinian. While it is widely regarded as the election favorite, no opinion 
polls indicating the chances of other contenders have been released yet.

The HHK, which won the last parliamentary elections held in April 2017, needs 
to garner at least 5 percent of the vote in order to win any parliament seats. 
The legal vote threshold for alliances is set at 7 percent.




Likely Supplier Of Armenia’s First Fighter Jets ‘Chosen’

        • Sargis Harutyunyan

Armenia - Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan speaks at a news conference in 
Yerevan, .

The government has selected the type of first-ever fighter jets which it is 
planning to acquire for Armenia’s armed forces, Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan 
said on Monday.

“I can put it this way: the choice already been made and some 
financial-technical issues are being sorted out,” he told a news conference.

In June, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian photographed himself in the cockpit of 
a Russian Sukhoi Su-30SM warplane parked at the Erebuni airbase in Yerevan. 
Russian media reported afterwards that that Yerevan is now negotiating with 
Moscow on the purchase of such sophisticated aircraft.

Other news reports said last month that Sweden has offered to sell Armenia 
lighter JAS 39 Gripen jets manufactured by the Swedish aerospace company Saab.

Tonoyan did not deny those reports. “There is no decision regarding Gripen at 
the moment,” he said. “There is another offer on the table from another partner 
which is being very seriously considered, and a decision will be made very soon 
regarding acquisitions.”

The minister implied that the offer was made by Russia. But he did not go into 
details.


RUSSIA -- An Su-30 fighter jet of the Russian air force launches a missile 
during maneuvers in southern Russia, September 27, 2018

The Moscow-based daily “Kommersant” claimed in June that a Russian-Armenian 
deal signed in 2012 called for the delivery of at least 12 Su-30SMs to Armenia 
but that the Armenian side did not receive them due to “financial 
difficulties.” The paper said Moscow now hopes to reach an agreement with new 
Armenian government on implementing that multimillion-dollar deal “as soon as 
possible.”

The Armenian Air Force currently consists of 15 or so low-flying Su-25 jets 
designed for air-to-ground missions.

Su-30SM can perform a broader range of military tasks with more long-range and 
precision-guided weapons. It is a more advanced version of a heavy fighter jet 
developed by the Sukhoi company in the late 1980s. The Russian military 
commissioned the first batch of such aircraft in 2012.

Tonoyan first confirmed Yerevan’s plans to acquire “multirole” warplanes in 
August. The Armenian army, he told military officials, needs them because “no 
missile system can be a substitute for this capacity in terms of flexibility 
and resilience.” Tonoyan made the comments more than a week after visiting 
Moscow and meeting with a top executive of Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state-run 
arms exporter.




Armenian Military Gears Up For Syria Deployment


Syria - Syrians walk by a poster in Arabic that reads, "Thank you guardians of 
the homeland," in Aleppo, January 18, 2018.

Armenia is pressing ahead with plans to deploy military doctors and demining 
experts in Syria, Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan said on Monday.

Tonoyan told reporters that the Armenian military and other relevant parties 
are now completing “memorandum-related procedures” required for such a 
deployment.

“It could be done very quickly,” he said in comments cited by the Armenpress 
news agency. “It could happen before the end of this year or early next year.”

“The group is fully prepared, it can leave [for Syria] immediately after that 
process is complete,” he added.

Yerevan’s plans to launch a “humanitarian mission” in Syria were first 
announced by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian following his September 8 talks in 
Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Tonoyan clarified afterwards that 
the Armenian contingent will include about 100 medics, sappers and other 
military personnel tasked with protecting them.

According to one of Tonoyan’s deputies, Gabriel Balayan, they will be primarily 
helping civilians in the war-ravaged city of Aleppo. Balayan told RFE/RL’s 
Armenian service on September 11 that the deployment will be carried out “at 
the request of the Syrian government.”

John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, discussed 
the issue with Pashinian and Tonoyan when he visited Yerevan on October 25.

“The prime minister said this was not going to be military assistance, it would 
be purely humanitarian,” Bolton said after the talks. “I think that’s 
important. It would be a mistake for anybody else to get involved militarily in 
the Syrian conflict at the moment.”

Russia has been trying to legitimize its strong military presence in Syria, 
criticized by the West, by getting other countries to also deploy troops there. 
A top Russian military official said in August 2017 Armenia and Serbia are 
ready to join a multinational “coalition” which Moscow hoped would help its 
soldiers clear landmines.

The former Armenian government seemed reluctant to commit troops for such a 
mission. Speaking at the UN General Assembly in September 2017, then President 
Serzh Sarkisian said Armenian deployment in Syria requires a UN mandate.

An estimated 80,000 ethnic Armenians lived in Syria and Aleppo in particular 
before the outbreak of the bloody civil war there in 2011. Most of them have 
since fled the country. Thousands of Syrian Armenians have taken refuge in 
Armenia.

 


Press Review


(Saturday, November 10)

A Russian political analyst, Alexei Malashenko, assures “168 Zham” that 
Armenia’s failure to replace Yuri Khachaturov by another Armenian secretary 
general of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) will not seriously 
hurt its relationship with Russia. Malashenko argues that Russian-Armenian 
military ties remain strong. But, he says, the CSTO issue could be exploited by 
political opponents of the new Armenian government.

“Zhoghovurd” reports that the Armenian Revolutionary Federation 
(Dashnaktsutyun) is poised to release its list of candidates for the December 9 
parliamentary elections. The paper expects to see few new names there, saying 
that prominent part figures such as Armen Rustamian, Artsvik Minasian and Davit 
Lokian will also run for the parliament on an individual basis. It notes that 
unlike in the last elections both Dashnaktsutyun and other major parties are 
planning to have their leading members run in nationwide constituencies as 
well. It wonders whether this will help Dashnaktsutyun win seats in the next 
National Assembly.

“Those who resent the new government’s staffing policy and the incompetence of 
newly appointed officials are certainly right,” editorializes “Hraparak.” “They 
are right to believe that because of young and inexperienced rulers there has 
been -- and there will be -- a catastrophic decline in professionalism in our 
country. And the complaints of those people who say that the former cadres did 
a better job and were more competent and efficient in their areas are 
absolutely understandable. But we cannot fail to counter that under the former 
regime there was corruption, stagnation and a tradition of getting things done 
through nepotism … and other vicious practices. It is certainly too early to be 
happy and claim that corruption has been eliminated, that only worthy 
individuals will be promoted and that we have already gotten out of the swamp … 
But there is no doubt that the new government has breathed a fresh life, 
aroused hopes and showed corrupt officials and weeds grown in shadow of their 
rich daddies their place.”

(Tatev Danielian)

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