Yesterday, Pashinyan met with representatives of the business community and assured that with the peace established with Azerbaijan, Armenia is entering a new period of economic development. Moreover, he continued to address the perspectives of the TRIPP project launch, talking about rail cargo transportation through the territory of Azerbaijan to Armenia.

Are such proposals really forward-looking, or against the background of the latest Russian announcements, a quasi-comforting alternative for businessmen? 168․am was interested in political economist Hrant Mikayelyan.

“How the business community will react to Pashinyan’s false promises, it will be a bit difficult for me to clarify, because of course there are people who look very positively at the prospects of establishing relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan, regardless of all the circumstances.

Here his calculation may partially work, but at the same time, the business community already realizes that Pashinyan’s policy in the direction of Russia will significantly worsen their position, and in addition, in the direction of Turkey, if we get rid of the language of promises and move to real life, then realistic, tangible progress is not observed.

Therefore, I think that this PR move will not have the effect it wants to have. In other words, he will not get additional votes and additional support in that community,” explained Hrant Mikayelyan.

To the question: does Pashinyan’s talk about long-term economic prospects indicate that he is confident in his and his team’s re-election prospects, the political scientist answered that the current behavior of the authorities indicates the opposite.

“I don’t see the confidence that they are convinced of their reproduction. In other words, the actions of the authorities, the propaganda they are conducting, the new chain of arrests, yesterday’s unsuccessful attempt to arrest Gohar Ghumashyan, and the attempts of new repressions show their distrust. Pashinyan’s tasteless statements… all this proves that there is no trust.

The fact that they want to present the situation like that is another matter, but it is not necessary to overestimate the possibility of reproduction,” he added.

Hrant Mikayelyan listed several factors that will be of significant importance in the electoral mosaic in any case, such as where will the electorate of the parties and forces that will not participate in the elections go, or whether Pashinyan may try to resort to some unconventional steps, to introduce a state of emergency, etc., the internal political shades of the European Political Community Summit in Armenia…

“There are many questions here, but Pashinyan knows better than anyone that at the moment his support is lower than the support of the opposition, which is also confirmed by polls. Another thing is that with various manipulations, for example, in the scenario of the Yerevan elections, he can try to win, and it is not excluded,” the specialist summarized.

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