Wednesday,
Armenian PM Denies ‘Political Persecution’ Of Opposition Leader
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian addresses the parliament,
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian dismissed on Wednesday opposition claims that
Gagik Tsarukian, the leader of the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), is
prosecuted for political reasons.
“In the past the authorities used such criminal cases to keep those [opposition]
forces under control, force them into coalitions and so on because they lacked
legitimacy,” said Pashinian. “Our government does not have such an objective. We
don’t need to turn criminal cases into subjects of political horse-trading so
that they make fewer [anti-government] statements or watch their language.”
“We know the [right] method of making them watch their language,” he said “We
will teach them.”
“They won’t even talk here anymore because the people will kick them out of here
altogether,” he added during the Armenian government’s question-and-answer
session in the parliament.
Pashinian spoke there the day after the parliament’s pro-government majority
voted to allow law-enforcement authorities to prosecute and arrest Tsarukian on
charges of buying votes during parliamentary elections held in 2017.
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (L) attends the inauguration of a
ceramics plant mostly owned by Gagik Tsarukian (R), November 7, 2019.
Tsarukian and his party, which makes up the largest opposition group in the
National Assembly, reject the accusations as baseless and politically motivated.
They say that Pashinian ordered the criminal proceedings in response to the BHK
leader’s recent calls for the government’s resignation.
Addressing his senior loyalists on June 5, Tsarukian accused the government of
mishandling Armenia’s coronavirus crisis and failing to mitigate its
socioeconomic consequences. Pashinian and his political allies reacted angrily
to that speech.
Prosecutor-General Artur Davtian denied that the case is politically motivated
when he spoke in the parliament on Tuesday. He said that the National Security
Service (NSS) launched the vote buying investigation in February.
The NSS interrogated Tsarukian again immediately after the parliament lifted his
immunity from prosecution. It went on to ask a court in Yerevan to allow
investigators to place one of the country’s richest men under pre-trial arrest.
The court began hearings on the NSS demand on Wednesday evening.
Armenia’s Coronavirus Hospital Beds ‘Still Sufficient’
• Susan Badalian
Armenia -- A medical worker wearing protective equipment moves a patient into
the Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center in Yerevan, June 9, 2020
Armenia still has enough hospital beds to treat increased numbers of coronavirus
patients, the Ministry of Health insisted on Wednesday.
“We have no problems with regard to hospitalization at the moment,” the ministry
spokeswoman, Alina Nikoghosian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “The available
hospital beds are still sufficient.”
Nikoghosian said at the same time that 176 infected people in need of urgent
treatment waited to be hospitalized as of Wednesday morning. But she stressed
that 140 of them were in kept in medical “triage centers” in preparation for
their hospitalization.
“So the [hospitalization] process is going on and perhaps most of them have
already been hospitalized,” added the official.
The coronavirus crisis is putting a growing strain on Armenia’s underfunded
healthcare system, forcing the health authorities to ramp up capacity. The
authorities pledged last week to make 350 new hospital beds available for
COVID-19 patients. Armenian hospitals fighting the epidemic had a total of over
2,000 beds at that point.
Just over 18,000 coronavirus cases and at least 302 deaths have been recorded in
the country of about 3 million to date. According to the Ministry of Health, 544
people tested positive for the virus on Tuesday.
Nikoghosian put the current number of active cases at 10,818. The vast majority
of these infected people are confined at home and monitored by primary
healthcare workers.
Health Minister Arsen Torosian said, meanwhile, that despite the increased daily
numbers of new infections the disease has spread in the last 10 days more slowly
than was expected by the health authorities. In a Facebook post, he said this is
the result of more Armenians practicing social distancing, wearing face masks
and taking other precautions recommended by the authorities.
Torosian also cautioned: “The situation remains very tense and we all need to
make additional and prolonged efforts to improve it.”
Armenian Opposition Wants Parliament Probe Into COVID-19
• Tatevik Lazarian
Armenia -- Deputies from the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party attend a
parliament session in Yerevan, June 19, 2019.
The opposition Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) called on Wednesday for a
parliamentary inquiry into the authorities’ response to the continuing
coronavirus epidemic in the country.
Senior BHK lawmakers announced the initiative as they boycotted a session of the
Armenian parliament in protest against its decision on Tuesday to allow the
arrest and prosecution of the party’s leader, Gagik Tsarukian. He is facing
accusations of vote buying rejected by him as politically motivated.
The BHK, which holds 26 seats in the 132-member National Assembly, needs the
backing of another parliamentary opposition party, Bright Armenia (LHK), in
order to be able to force the creation of an ad hoc parliamentary commission on
the coronavirus crisis.
LHK leader Edmon Marukian said his party is ready to join the BHK initiative.
“We will back the idea of an investigating commission on the condition that the
commission is headed by a representative of the LHK,” said Marukian. He argued
that his party was the first to float the idea.
Tsarukian’s party also urged the LHK to join it in asking the Constitutional
Court to rule whether a government ban on rallies is legal. The ban stems from a
coronavirus-related state of emergency in Armenia.
Marukian also questioned the ban, saying that Armenians can safely hold street
gatherings if they wear face masks and observe physical distancing. Still, he
said opposition lawmakers should have the issue discussed in the parliament
before appealing to the Constitutional Court.
Meanwhile, one of the leaders of the parliament’s pro-government majority, Alen
Simonian, said he has no problem with the BHK initiatives.
“I personally find these two initiatives excellent,” said Simonian. “If that
commission is formed we will also be able to investigate rumors spread by groups
close the party mentioned by you (BHK), rumors that the coronavirus does not
exist.”
The BHK, the LHK and other opposition forces have been very critical of the
authorities’ handling of the coronavirus crisis, holding them responsible for
the large number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the country. Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian and his allies reject the criticism.
The Armenian Ministry of Health said on Wednesday morning that 544 people tested
positive for the virus in the past 24 hours, bringing to 18,033 the total number
of confirmed cases in the country of about 3 million.
The ministry also reported 9 more deaths primarily caused by COVID-19. The
official death toll thus reached 302.
The figure does not include the deaths of 99 other people infected with the
disease. The health authorities say other, pre-existing conditions were the main
causes of these fatalities.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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