Author: Alex Nanijanian

                                        Monday, 
Prosecutor Defends Pashinian’s Campaign Rhetoric
        • Naira Nalbandian
ARMENIA -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian gives a speech during a 
campaign rally in central Yerevan, June 17, 2021
A senior Armenian prosecutor insisted on Monday that Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian did not intimidate his political opponents or promise a violent 
crackdown on them during the recent election campaign.
The prosecutor, Karen Bisharian, defended Pashinian’s fiery campaign rhetoric 
during ongoing Constitutional Court hearings on opposition appeals against 
official results of the June 20 elections that gave victory to the ruling Civil 
Contract party.
The Hayastan bloc, one of the four opposition groups that lodged the appeals, 
listed Pashinian’s “hate speech” and “calls for violence” among violations which 
it says seriously affected the election outcome. The bloc’s representatives 
argued, in particular, that Pashinian brandished a hammer during campaign 
rallies held across the country.
Bisharian countered that the premier used the hammer only as a metaphor for a 
“dictatorship of the law” promised by him on the campaign trail.
“Your Honor, I think it is clear that the context of these words was not about 
violence,” he told the Constitutional Court judges. “Perhaps it was about 
coercion … but not every coercion is violence.”
A Hayastan lawyer, Aram Vardevanian, cited Pashinian’s furious remarks addressed 
to the management of Armenia’s largest mining company accused by the prime 
minister of not allowing its workers to attend his rally held in the nearby town 
of Kajaran.
“The Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC), you have crossed the red line, 
which means that this blue hammer will first smash your heads. Whatever you say, 
your fate is sealed, you just quietly wait for your verdict,” declared Pashinian.
Armenia - The Constitutional Court holds hearings on opposition appeals against 
official results of the June 20 parliamentary elections, Yerevan, 
Bisharian insisted that this was not a threat of or call for violence and that 
the premier simply sought to defend voters’ freedom to choose a political force 
preferred by him. The prosecutor admitted, though, that law-enforcement 
authorities have not charged any ZCMC executive with threatening to fire workers 
attending Pashinian’s rally.
During the election campaign Pashinian vowed to wage “political vendettas” 
against local government officials supporting the opposition. “I promise you 
that you will see those scumbag officials lying here on the asphalt,” he told 
supporters in Kajaran.
Campaigning in Armenia’s Syunik province, Pashinian also pledged to “break their 
[bank] accounts, destroy their firms and shove each of these criminal upstarts 
into holes.”
The mayors of Kajaran and three other Syunik communities affiliated or linked 
otherwise with Hayastan have been arrested over the past week on what they see 
as politically motivated charges.
Armenia’s human rights defender, Arman Tatoyan, repeatedly criticized 
Pashinian’s fiery rhetoric during the parliamentary race. Tatoyan deplored his 
threats to “throw on the ground” and “bang against the wall” opposition 
supporters who would try to illegally influence the election outcome.
“This unacceptable rhetoric is associated with mass violations of human rights,” 
the ombudsman said on June 15.
Former Security Chief Gets New Post
        • Nane Sahakian
Armenia - Argishti Kyaramian, the newly appointed head of Armenia's 
Investigative Committee, .
A 30-year-old official who was sacked as head of Armenia’s National Security 
Service (NSS) during last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh was named on Monday to 
run another law-enforcement agency.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced Argishti Kyaramian’s appointment to the 
top position in the Investigative Committee during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan. 
Pashinian praised the track record of the committee’s previous head, Hayk 
Grigorian, but did not give a clear reason for the decision to replace him.
Kyaramian took up his fifth senior state post during Pashinian’s rule. He worked 
in the Office of the Prosecutor General and the State Revenue Committee before 
becoming the acting head of an anti-corruption government body in 2019.
In June 2020, Pashinian appointed Kyaramian as director of the NSS despite the 
fact that he had never worked in Armenia’s most powerful security service. He 
was fired four months later, less than two weeks after the outbreak of the war 
with Azerbaijan. No official reason was given for his sacking.
Pashinian solidified Kyaramian’s reputation as one of his trusted lieutenants 
when he appointed the latter as deputy chief of the Investigative Committee last 
December.
Opposition figures and other critics of the government claim that Kyaramian’s 
main mission over the past year has been to oversee politically charged criminal 
investigations.
Nina Karapetiants, a civil rights activist, complained that ever since coming to 
power in 2018 Pashinian has rarely explained frequent personnel changes made by 
him.
“How can they give this job to someone who was sacked as NSS director during the 
war without an explanation?” she asked. “Is this latest appointment a reward or 
punishment? Is Mr. Kyaramian irreplaceable or what? The public deserves to know 
who was fired for what.”
Armenian Government Sets Ambitious Growth Targets
        • Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia - A construction site in Yerevan, July 2, 2021.
The Armenian government said on Monday that it expects the domestic economy to 
expand by roughly 7 percent annually from 2022 to 2026.
The ambitious growth targets were set in a mid-term public spending plan 
approved by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet at an extraordinary session 
held behind the closed doors.
The move followed a significant upward revision of the government’s economic 
growth target for this year. Pashinian said on July 1 that Armenia’s Gross 
Domestic Product is now projected to increase by 6 percent.
The government had forecast earlier that the Armenian economy will grow by 3.2 
percent in 2021 after shrinking by 7.6 percent last year due to the coronavirus 
pandemic and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The World Bank offered a similar outlook in late March, saying that growth will 
likely reach 3.4 percent this year and accelerate to 4.3 percent in 2022.
“The recovery will be slow; the economy is unlikely to return to pre-COVID 
output levels until 2023,” the bank cautioned in a report.
The International Monetary Fund was less upbeat about Armenia’s short-term 
growth prospects in its World Economic Outlook released in April.
In a statement, Pashinian’s government said rising investments anticipated by it 
will be the main drivers of steady fast growth projected for the next five 
years. It did not say whether the government hopes to attract most of those 
investments from Armenian or foreign private investors or international 
development agencies.
Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian said in this regard that the government will set 
up three “industrial zones” in the country. He said two of them will mainly 
cater for Iranian investors.
“Iranian companies are now showing a strong interest in relocating part of their 
manufacturing facilities to Armenia,” Kerobian told journalists.
According to the government program, faster GDP growth will also translate into 
a sizable rise in tax revenues. They are projected to increase from about 1.4 
trillion drams ($2.8 billion) in 2020 to 2.1 trillion drams in 2024.
More Opposition Mayors Arrested In Armenia
        • Susan Badalian
Armenia - Meghri community head Mkhitar Zakarian.
Law-enforcement authorities have arrested the heads of two more communities of 
Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province in a continuing crackdown on local 
leaders and supporters of the main opposition Hayastan alliance.
One of them, Mkhitar Zakarian, was taken into custody early on Monday three days 
after resigning as mayor of the towns of Meghri and Agarak and several nearby 
villages making up a single administrative unit.
The Investigative Committee said afterwards that he has been formally charged 
with abuse of power and fraud. Zakarian rejected the accusations through his 
lawyer, Yerem Sargsian.
Sargsian said Zakarian was manhandled by masked and heavily armed police 
officers shortly after arriving, together with him, at a police department in 
Yerevan. He said Zakarian was toppled to the ground, filmed and dragged away by 
the officers despite not putting up any resistance.
The lawyer condemned the police actions as a gross violation of the due process 
aimed at humiliating and intimidating his client.
Zakarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Saturday that he decided to step down 
to make sure that his community and local government employees do not suffer 
from fresh criminal proceedings launched against him.
“Employees of the community administration are constantly summoned to the 
police,” he said.
Zakarian, who was elected to the National Assembly on the Hayastan ticket, also 
said he decided to take up his seat in Armenia’s new parliament.
Also detained was Suren Ohanjanian, who runs the village of Vorotan, which is 
part of another Syunik community comprising the town of Goris.
Ohanjanian is prosecuted in connection with financial aid allocated to 31 
Vorotan residents from the community budget in early June. Prosecutors claim 
that he told some of them to vote for Hayastan in the June 20 general elections. 
The village chief’s brother flatly denied the allegation when he spoke with 
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian speaks at an election campaign rally 
held by his Hayastan alliance in Kapan, administrative center of Syunik 
province, June 7, 2021.
Lusine Avetian, the head of another village close to Goris, was arrested a week 
ago because of similar cash handouts given to several local residents. She too 
denies trying to buy their votes.
A pro-opposition TV station based in Syunik showed one of those residents saying 
over the weekend that police officers bullied his wife into giving false 
incriminating testimony against Avetian. The man insisted that his family was 
never told to back the opposition bloc which finished second in the elections.
Meanwhile, a court in Yerevan allowed law-enforcement authorities to hold the 
mayor of another Syunik town, Kajaran, in detention pending investigation. The 
mayor, Manvel Paramazian, was arrested on Thursday and charged afterwards with 
vote buying and fraud.
Paramazian’s lawyer, Lusine Sahakian, said he rejects the accusations as 
politically motivated.
Paramazian and Zakarian already faced other accusations before their arrests. 
They as well as the head of the Goris municipality, Arush Arushanian, were among 
the heads of more than a dozen Syunik communities who issued late last year 
statements condemning Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s handling of the autumn 
war with Azerbaijan and demanding his resignation.
Some of them encouraged supporters to disrupt Pashinian’s visit to Syunik in 
December. The prime minister faced angry protests when he finally toured Goris, 
Agarak, Meghri and the provincial capital Kapan in May.
Armenia - Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian brandishes a hammer at a 
campaign meeting in Sisian, Syunik province, June 15, 2021.
The embattled Syunik mayors and a former provincial governor, Vahe Hakobian, 
lead an opposition party affiliated with Hayastan. The opposition bloc headed by 
former President Robert Kocharian last week condemned the continuing 
“repressions” against its members and said that they will “further deepen the 
political crisis” in Armenia.
During the election campaign Pashinian vowed to wage “political vendettas” 
against local government officials supporting the opposition.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Kajaran, he said: “I promise you that you will 
see those scumbag officials lying here on the asphalt.”
Pashinian repeatedly brandished on the campaign trail a hammer symbolizing a 
popular “steel mandate” which he said will allow him to rule Armenia with a more 
firm hand.
“With this thing we will be taking out those rusty nails, upstarts huddling in 
various municipalities from many places, including this place,” he told 
supporters in Sisian, another Syunik town run by an anti-Pashinian mayor.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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