Friday, July 21, 2017
Karabakh Leader `Unlikely' To Seek Reelection In 2020
July 21, 2017
. Hovannes Movsisian
Nagorno-Karabakh - Vitali Balasanian, secretary of Karabakh's Security
Council, is interviewed by RFE/RL in Stepanakert, 21Jul2017.
Bako Sahakian, Nagorno-Karabakh's president, is unlikely seek another
term in the next presidential election due in 2020, a retired Karabakh
army general currently allied to him said on Friday.
"I don't think that the current president will run in 2020," said
Vitali Balasanian, the secretary of Karabakh's Security Council.
"It's up to him to decide. But my personal view is that I can't
imagine that," Balasanian told RFE/RL's Armenian service
(Azatutyun.am) in Stepanakert.
Earlier this week, the Karabakh parliament controversially extended
Sahakian's rule by electing him as the unrecognized republic's interim
president. He will serve at least until Karabakh completes in 2020 its
transition to a fully presidential system of government in line with a
new constitution enacted earlier this year.
The previous constitution barred Sahakian from seeking a third
term. But under the current one, he can run in the next presidential
election slated for 2020. The Karabakh leader has not ruled out his
participation in the vote, fueling more criticism of his
constitutional reform by local opposition figures.
Asked whether he himself could run for president in 2020, Balasanian
said: "Time will tell. It's too early say yes or no now."
A former deputy commander of Karabakh's Armenian-backed army,
Balasanian was the main opposition candidate in the last presidential
election held in 2012. Official election results gave him around 33
percent of the vote, compared with more than 66 percent polled by
Sahakian.
Balasanian described the election as "free but not fair" at the time,
accusing the incumbent of abusing administrative resources. He agreed
to become the secretary of Sahakian's Security Council last year.
The 58-year-old retired general is one of Karabakh's most prominent
veterans of the 1991-1994 war with Azerbaijan. He commanded Karabakh
Armenians forces in the eastern Askeran district throughout the war.
Armenia Needs Eurasian Union Membership, Insists Ruling Party
July 21, 2017
Armenia - Eduard Sharmazanov, spokesman for the ruling Republican
Party, at a news conference in Yerevan, 14May2017.
President Serzh Sarkisian's Republican Party (HHK) has dismissed an
opposition leader's calls for Armenia to leave the Russian-led
Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
Edmon Marukian, a pro-Western leader of the opposition Yelk alliance,
advocated an exit from the EEU last week after Russia stopped
recognizing the validity of driving licenses issued by Armenia and
other countries where Russian is not an official language.
A Russian law which took effect on June 1 banned foreign nationals
with driving licenses issued by their home countries from working as
drivers in Russia. The State Duma, the Russian lower house of
parliament, passed last week another law which waived the restriction
for citizens of those countries, including EEU members Kyrgyzstan and
Belarus, where the Russian language has an official status.
Marukian said that the Russian laws run counter to EEU regulations on
a common labor market set up by the bloc's member states. The EEU's
executive body has reportedly given the same assessment, telling
Moscow to scrap the ban on Armenian driving licenses.
Reacting to Marukian's statements, HHK spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov
said late on Thursday: "If there are political forces that agitate for
the exit from the EEU, they had better come up with concrete
alternatives and facts, rather than speak on the emotional plane."
Sharmazanov claimed that the Sarkisian administration's controversial
decision to join the EEU was based on "clear calculations as to what
our farmers, investors, tourism sector and the economy [as a whole]
will gain." He said that the Armenian economy has already benefited
from better access to the Russian and other ex-Soviet markets.
"We have increased our exports by 23 percent [in 2017] and a large
part of them went to EEU countries," Sharmazanov told reporters. "The
number of tourists [visiting Armenia] has gone up by about 30
percent. We must not make political statements without serious
corroborations."
Sarkisian unexpectedly announced his decision to seek membership in
the EEU in September 2013 shortly after Armenia and the European Union
completed negotiations on a far-reaching Association Agreement. The
foreign policy U-turn, which scuttled the planned deal with the EU,
was widely attributed to Russian pressure.
Marukian's stance on the EEU has not yet been officially backed by
Yelk's leadership. The bloc consisting of three opposition parties
holds 9 seats in Armenia's 105-member parliament.
U.S. Watchdog Urges Baku To Free Russian-Israeli Blogger
July 21, 2017
Azerbaijan -- Russian-Israeli blogger Aleksandr Lapshin is escorted
upon his landing in Baku after being extradicted from Belarus to
Azerbaijan, February 7, 2017
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based watchdog,
has again called for the immediate release of Russian-Israeli blogger
Aleksandr Lapshin, who has been imprisoned in Azerbaijan for his
visits to Nagorno-Karabakh.
"Aleksandr Lapshin should not be in jail for traveling to a disputed
region," the CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, Nina
Ognianova, said after an Azerbaijani court sentenced Lapshin to three
years in prison on Thursday.
"We call on authorities in Baku not to contest the journalist's appeal
and to release him unconditionally," a CPJ statement quoted her as
saying.
The court ruled that Lapshin illegally crossed Azerbaijan's
internationally recognized borders when he travelled to Karabakh via
Armenia in 2011 and 2012. But it cleared him of making "public appeals
against the state," a crime punishable by up to eight years in prison
in Azerbaijan.
The 40-year-old blogger, who has Israeli, Russian and Ukrainian
citizenships, was detained in Belarus's capital Minsk on an
Azerbaijani arrest warrant last December. The Belarusian authorities
extradited him to Azerbaijan in February, prompting strong criticism
from Armenia and Russia.
The CPJ demanded Lapshin's release shortly before the
extradition. "Writers should never be imprisoned for expressing their
views," it said at the time.
Azerbaijan has repeatedly rejected the international criticism.
Meanwhile, the Russian Justice Ministry said on Friday that it is
ready to seek Lapshin's extradition to Russia if he expresses such a
desire. Russia's human rights ombudsperson, Tatyana Moskalkova, said
for her part that talks on the blogger's handover to Moscow have
already begun. She did not elaborate.
Armenian IT Growth Hits Record High
July 21, 2017
. Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian visits the offices of a new IT
company in Yerevan, 17Jun2017.
The rapid growth of Armenia's information technology (IT) sector
employing thousands of engineers accelerated to 38.2 percent last,
according to government data.
The tech industry had already expanded by an average of over 20
percent annually in the previous decade, making it the fastest-growing
sector of the Armenian economy. According to government estimates, the
country's 500 or so mostly small and medium-sized IT firms earned over
$550 million in combined revenue in 2015.
The sector is dominated by the Armenian branches of U.S. tech giants
like as Synopsys, National Instruments, Mentor Graphics and
VMware. But its steady expansion is also increasingly driven by
homegrown Armenian companies.
Armenia - Prime Minister Karen Karapetian visits the offices of the
Armenian tech company PicsArt in Yerevan, 24Mar2017.
The most successful of these startups is PicsArt, one of the world's
leading mobile photo editing and sharing applications. The company now
has more than 350 employees in Armenia and boasts 90 million active
monthly users worldwide.
Another, smaller startup founded in 2013 attracted $5 million in
funding from two U.S. venture capital firms earlier this year. The
company called Teamable develops special software used by businesses
for hiring skilled workers. Like PicsArt, Teamable has offices not
only in Yerevan but also in San Francisco.
Another Armenian firm, SoloLearn, won this month the Grand Prize of
Facebook's annual "Apps of the Year" event, which attracted 900
submissions from 87 countries. SoloLearn offers a free online app for
people interested in learning computer programming.
Karen Vartanian, chairman of Armenia's Union of Information Technology
Enterprises (UITE), stressed the growing importance of such
startups. "Our local products are increasingly emerging and proving a
success in the international market," he told RFE/RL's Armenian
service (Azatutyun.am).
Vahan Shakarian, the executive director of the Yerevan-based company
Technology and Science Dynamics manufacturing smartphones and tablet
computers, said the sector's has been rapidly developing because it is
export-oriented. He also cautioned: "Booms are possible in
economics. They key thing is to at least stay at the same level after
they are over. It's quite a challenge."
Armenia - Children at the Gyumri branch of the TUMO Center for
Creative Technologies, 13May2016.
For Vartanian, the key challenge is a continuing lack of skilled IT
personnel in Armenia. "Our growth is now stunted by a serious shortage
of personnel," he said. "The education system is in tatters."
Industry executives have long complained about the inadequate
professional level of many graduates of IT departments of Armenia
universities. According to their estimates, there are now between
2,000 and 4,000 job vacancies in the sector employing about 15,000
people.
Successive Armenian governments have pledged to tackle this
problem. Vartanian insisted, however, that there is still no
"comprehensive, strategic cooperation" on the matter between the
authorities and IT companies.
In January, Prime Minister Karen Karapetian met with a team of
government officials and tech executives that proposed a wide-ranging
reform of engineering education in Armenia. One of those executives
said only half of 1,300 IT students graduating from Armenian
universities each year are qualified enough to work in the sector
without undergoing further training.
Press Review
July 21, 2017
"Zhoghovurd" condemns the judges presiding over the ongoing three
trials of radical opposition members accused of plotting or attempting
armed revolts against Armenia's leadership. The paper claims that
instead of administering justice they are helping the authorities to
take "political revenge." It also accuses the judges of acting on
government orders to create "inhuman conditions" for the defendants.
In an interview with "Aravot," the parliamentary leader of the ruling
Republican Party (HHK), Vahram Baghdasarian, downplays the
significance of Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin's calls
for Armenia to adopt Russian as its second official language. "The
Russian Duma speaker was not aware that students in Armenia's schools
are taught the Russian language from the second grade," says
Baghdasarian. "There is no issue of making Russian a state language in
Armenia," he adds. "The [Armenian] language is our national
value. There can be only one official language in the Republic of
Armenia: Armenian. This is our position, which was presented by us and
accepted by our Russian partners."
Baghdasarian goes on to dismiss calls by a leader of the opposition
Yelk alliance, Edmon Marukian, for Armenia's withdrawal from the
Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). "We cannot harm a family
that was created with great difficulties," he says. "We have made a
lot of progress in that family and must stick with it."
"Haykakan Zhamanak" reports that the Armenian government on Thursday
granted tax breaks to a private agricultural firm whose shareholders
include two sons of Vartan Harutiunian, the head of the State Revenue
Committee (SRC). Each of them holds a 17 percent stake in the company
called Green Farmer. The latter has pledged to invest more than $2
million in new fruit orchards to be created in Armenia's Ararat
province. "Once again, the government is giving privileges to a
company belonging to relatives of a high-ranking official," complains
the paper.
(Tigran Avetisian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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