Friday,
Authorities Accused Of Foul Play Before Referendum
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia -- Gevorg Gorgisian of the opposition Bright Armenia Party at a news
conference in Yerevan, May 13, 2019.
An opposition leader accused the Armenian authorities on Friday of using their
administrative resources to try to win the upcoming referendum on their drive to
replace most members of the country’s Constitutional Court.
“We are already receiving reports from various provinces that their governors
are summoning village mayors and forcing them to ensure that a ‘Yes’ vote wins
in their villages,” claimed Gevorg Gorgisian, a leading member of the opposition
Bright Armenia Party (LHK).
Gorgisian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service that the local community chiefs are
told to “do everything” for that purpose. He refused, however, to name the
“three or four provinces” whose governors are allegedly engaged in such foul
play.
A senior representative of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s My Step bloc
dismissed the allegations, while challenging Gorgisian to substantiate them.
“Such a thing is not possible,” said Vahagn Hovakimian.
“Let them show which governor or village mayor [is using administrative
resources,]” added Hovakimian.
Armenia’s provincial and local community administrations are overseen by
Minister for Local Government Suren Papikian. He is also the manager of My
Step’s campaign for a “Yes” vote in the referendum scheduled for April 5.
Papikian insisted on Wednesday that the ruling political team will not use its
government levers to secure around 650,000 votes needed for the adoption of
constitutional amendments drafted by it.
“Let nobody, be it a city or village mayor, do the authorities such a
disservice,” he told a news conference. “We don’t need that.”
“I hope that after making that appeal Mr. Papikian is not issuing other,
confidential instructions to governors,” Gorgisian said in this regard.
Armenia’s former authorities routinely pressured public sector employees and
exploited their administrative resources otherwise to win elections and
referendums marred by fraud allegations.
EU Envoy Hopeful About Visa Liberalization Talks With Armenia
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia -- European Union Ambassador Andrea Wiktorin speaks at a conference on
judicial reform in Yerevan, September 27, 2019.
A senior European Union diplomat has expressed hope that the EU will start
“soon” formal negotiations with Armenia on lifting its visa requirements for
Armenian citizens.
EU leaders pledged to launch a “visa liberalization dialogue” with Yerevan at
their Eastern Partnership summit with Armenia and five other former Soviet
republics held in Brussels more than two years ago. The pledge followed the
signing of a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between the
EU and Armenia.
Both the current and former Armenian governments have since pressed the
27-nation bloc to set a date for the start of the dialogue.
Andrea Wiktorin, the head of the EU Delegation in Armenia, said late on Thursday
that the European Commission acknowledges the Armenian authorities’
implementation of a 2013 agreement on “readmission” of Armenian illegal migrants
seeking asylum in Europe.
“The Commission sees a possibility of starting such a dialogue,” she told
RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “But this is a decision that has to be made by all EU
member states. We hope that we will soon reach the point where the member states
agree to start the dialogue.”
Wiktorin cautioned at the same time that “several” European countries still have
concerns about the large number of Armenian asylum seekers on their soil. “The
challenge is to convince these EU member states,” she said.
Citing the “example of other countries,” the diplomat also said that visa
liberalization dialogue could take “years” of preparation.
Tens of thousands of Armenians have emigrated to Europe for mainly economic
reasons since the early 1990s. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian stated in
September that the number of such migrants has fallen considerably since the
2018 “Velvet Revolution” that brought him to power.
Pashinian cited official EU statistics showing that there were 1,815 first-time
Armenian asylum applicants in the EU in the first half of 2019, down from 2,475
in the same period of 2018. The number of Armenia asylum seeks stood at 3,250 in
the first half of 2017.
Tsarukian’s Party Avoids Cooperation With Referendum ‘No’ Campaign
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia -- Gagik Tsarukian and other deputies from his Prosperous Armenia Party
attend a parliament session in Yerevan, July 9, 2019.
Businessman Gagik Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) appears to have
refused to cooperate lawyers campaigning for a “no” vote in the upcoming
referendum on a government proposal to oust most Constitutional Court judges.
The 61 lawyers critical of the Armenian government have been registered by the
Central Election Commission as the sole “No” side in the referendum campaign.
The official status allows them to have free airtime on state television and
appoint two of the seven members of each precinct-level election commission that
will be formed for the April 5 vote.
They thus need to recruit over 4,000 people ready to join those commissions, a
difficult task for the mostly Yerevan-based lawyers.
Last week, the No campaign appealed to the BHK and three other major opposition
parties to help fill its quotas with their members and supporters. The Bright
Armenia (LHK), Republican and Dashnaktsutyun parties replied that their licensed
members are free to take up the commission seats despite their calls for a
boycott of what they describe as an unconstitutional referendum.
Ruben Melikian, a “No” campaign coordinator, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service on
Friday that the BHK has turned down its proposal.
A senior BHK representative, Arman Abovian, explained that Tsarukian’s party
will not “officially” dispatch its members to the precinct commissions. But he
would not say whether they can join the commissions in an unofficial capacity.
The BHK, which has the second largest group in the Armenian parliament, has been
more cautious than the three other parties in opposing the controversial
constitutional changes which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s political team has
put on the referendum.
This stance has fuelled speculation that Tsarukian does not want to antagonize
Pashinian for fear of a government crackdown on his businesses. Aides to the
tycoon deny that.
Armenian AIDS Clinic Staff Quit In Protest
• Susan Badalian
Armenia -- Protesting employees of the Republican Center for the Prevention of
AIDS talk to reporters outside the main government building in Yerevan, February
27, 2020.
The work of Armenia’s sole medical center specializing in the treatment of HIV
and AIDS was disrupted on Friday as 80 percent of its employees resigned in
protest against the government’s decision to merge it with another clinic.
The Armenian Ministry of Health, which initiated the decision earlier this year,
says that the Republican Center for the Prevention of AIDS must be incorporated
into a Yerevan hospital which treats other infectious diseases, including the
flu and similar viruses.
Health Minister Arsen Torosian insisted earlier in February that Armenia no
longer needs a specialized HIV/AIDS clinic and that it now makes more sense to
have all infectious diseases treated by a single medical institution. “The fight
against AIDS must be integrated into the overall healthcare system,” he said.
The affected HIV/AIDS medics strongly disagree, saying the dissolution of their
center, which has detected up to 450 cases of HIV annually in Armenia, would
break up what they describe as a well-functioning system of preventing, tracking
and treating the immunodeficiency disease.
“In three, four or five years from now we will have … an uncontrolled epidemic,”
Arshak Papoyan, who heads one of the center’s divisions, claimed on Friday.
The government’s decision also sparked protests by many of the HIV-positive
Armenians who receive free antiretroviral drugs and counseling at the center.
Earlier this week, about 150 of them signed a joint letter to Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian urging him to reverse it.
The HIV/AIDS patients are particularly worried about Torosian’s intention to
“decentralize” services provided by the Republican Center. That includes
transferring the distribution of antiretroviral drugs from the center to regular
policlinics across the country. According to Torosian, this will destigmatize
HIV and AIDS and get people suffering from it out of social “isolation.”
HIV carriers counter that any breach of the confidentiality guaranteed by the
center would only worsen discrimination encountered by them and the stigma
associated with their disease. “None of us will go to a policlinic or the Nork
hospital [in Yerevan,]” one of them told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
On Wednesday, Torosian fired the center’s longtime director, Samvel Grigorian,
for his refusal to help implement the controversial merger. Just hours later,
Grigorian’s deputy, Aram Hakobian, was briefly detained by police for allegedly
refusing to hand the clinic’s official seal to Artur Berberian, its acting
director appointed by the minister.
It emerged on Friday at least 86 of the 108 people working at the center have
tendered their resignations in response to the government’s failure to meet
their demand.
“The conditions that have been created by various Ministry of Health officials
make our continued work impossible,” Hakobian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
“It’s not about an individual, it’s about preserving a system,” said another
senior HIV/AIDS medic, Janetta Petrosian.
Berberian deplored the mass resignations of the center’s staff. He warned that
their “inactivity” could be deemed a criminal offense.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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