Author: Kalantarian Kevo

NO IMPUNITY: ARMENIAN POLITICIANS DUCK JUSTICE

Transparency International
Oct 26 2012

By Varuzhan Hoktanyan on 26 October 2012in Europe and Central Asia,
Politics and government

It is nothing new for Armenians to see their politicians accused of
corruption. Usually the accusations have little effect and in a few
instances people may change jobs but they rarely get punished.

In July 2012, however, a court in the United States returned a guilty
verdict against Vardan Ayvazyan, a former environment minister and
current Member of Parliament for soliciting a $3 million bribe and
ordered him to pay $37.5 million in compensation to a US mining
company, which following its refusal to bribe lost its license
in Armenia.

Ayvazyan is also chair of the parliamentary Standing Committee and
a prominent representative of the ruling Republican Party. The news
of his conviction was reported in the Armenian press only in September.

In Armenia the police and the judiciary are among the top institutions
that people believe are most corrupt. So, we don’t expect those in
power to be brought to justice very often. Impunity is a big problem.

It will be very surprising if this politician has to pay a penny in
compensation, much less lose his job.

Today, despite the ruling in the US and all the evidence presented in
the court there, there is little political will in Armenia to follow
up on the case. This is a significant opportunity to show that the
rule of law is important and applies to everyone. It perpetuates the
idea that those who are corrupt and use their positions of power for
private gain will not be held to account.

Transparency Armenia has asked the Committee on Ethics of the National
Assembly of Armenia to look into the case to decide if the behaviour of
the parliamentarian lived up to ethical norms and standards. In terms
of other activism, there is a campaign running on Facebook demanding
Vardan Ayvazyan’s resignation and more than 500 people have signed
to date.

Of particular concern was Ayvazayan’s public contempt for the US
international court, the journalists who wrote about the case, and
the general public.

Unfortunately, the Ethics committee declined to open the case because
the alleged crime took place before Ayvazyan became an MP and before
the introduction of current ethics rules which were introduced in
May 2012.

It is a missed opportunity for Armenian law enforcement authorities
in not initiating any investigations after the US court decision. We
feel by highlighting this case, we can make a point about the rule
of law and why it is so important for political elites not to be seen
to be above the law

We are not pre-judging the former minister who clearly has the
right to appeal his conviction, but what we would like is there to
be transparency about the allegations and a way for the citizens
of Armenia to hold their elected officials to account. That is the
lesson here that we hope the political class will learn.

Varuzhan Hoktanyan is Executive Director of Transparency International
Anti-corruption Center, TI’s Chapter in Armenia.

ARMENIA FOREIGN MINISTRY TO BECOME FIVE-STAR HOTEL?
Giorgi Lomsadze

EurasiaNet.org
Oct 26 2012
NY

The Armenian foreign ministry building — 14,000 square meters of
Stalin-era, colonnaded grandeur — will soon be charging foreign guests
for visits. The building, perched on Yerevan’s central Republic Square,
has been sold to Argentine-Armenian millionaire Eduardo Eurnekian,
who reportedly plans to set up a luxury hotel in the structure.

Many Armenians opposed the sale, arguing that the cultural value
of the building and its location make it better fit for a cultural
purpose. What does it say “about the image of our country, our capital
city, its center, if half or even most of the buildings at its heart .
. . are to be hotels, not centers of culture?” asked Samvel Karapetian,
head of the non-profit group Research on Armenian Architecture .

As in other ex-Soviet cities where commercialization is changing the
faces of downtown areas, many consider the privatization of state
buildings that used to house government offices (and hosted historic
events) to be improper and distasteful.

In neighboring Georgia, there has been a lot of carping about earlier
plans for the privatization of Tbilisi’s old parliament building,
a structure with a prime role in the country’s recent history.
(The privatization plans, reportedly, are now frozen.) In Azerbaijan,
the destruction of buildings from Baku’s 19th-century oil-boom era
also has raised alarm.

But, in Armenia, Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian has defended the sale,
saying that downtown Yerevan needs more luxury hotels. “There is always
[a] shortage of hotels when more than two international events take
place in Yerevan at the same time,” he is quoted by ArmeniaNow as
saying. Investors and high-profile visitors could use an extra space
to hang out, he added.

Plus, how could government officials resist a $51.36-million-plus
offer – reportedly, double the price for a square meter of property
in the area? The argument is that the building can help Armenia make
money and still busy itself with foreign affairs.

The government will use the funds to build Armenia a new, downtown
foreign ministry by 2015, Asbarez reported, citing RFE/RL’s Armenian
service.

NKR DEFENSE MINISTER: “AFTER SAFAROV’S RELEASE THERE IS NO NEED TO EXPLAIN TO THE SOLDIERS WHO OUR RIVAL IS”

Mediamax
Oct 26 2012
Armenia

Yerevan/Mediamax/. As of October 1, Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire
regime over 12 000 times this year.

NKR Defense Minister Movses Hakobyan said this at the meeting with
the reporters, Mediamax reports.

According to him, only 9 000 cases of ceasefire violations by the
rival were recorded during the same period of last year.

“The rival began to more frequently use large-caliber weapons. It’s
obvious that they are trying to cause damage to our soldiers and
increase the spirit of their army,” Movses Hakobyan said.

In reply to Mediamax’s question about how the release of Ramil Safarov
affected the moral and psychological condition of NKR Defense Army,
the Minister said that the rival made over 1000 shots against the
Armenian side that day.

“The release of the killer had a positive impact on the moral and
psychological condition of our army. After this, there is no need to
explain to our soldiers who our enemy is,” said Movses Hakobyan. –0–

COMMANDER OF RUSSIAN LAND FORCES DISCUSSES RUSSIAN MILITARY BASE IN YEREVAN

Mediamax
Oct 26 2012
Armenia

Yerevan/Mediamax/. The working visit of Commander-in Chief of Russian
Land Forces, Colonel-General Vladimir Chirkin to Armenia is over.

As the press service of Armenian Defense Ministry reports, the
purpose of the visit was to check the readiness of units of the
Russian military base stationed in Armenia.

Within the framework of his visit, Colonel-General Vladimir Chirkin met
with Armenian Minister of Defense Seyran Ohanyan and Chief of Staff of
Armenian Armed Forces, Colonel-General Yuri Khachaturov. The parties
discussed a wide range of issues related to the activity of the Russian
military base in Armenia as well as bilateral military cooperation.

ARMENIAN EXPERTS, POLITICAL FIGURE DEBATE ON TIES WITH RUSSIA, EU

Zhamanak
Oct 25 2012
Armenia

[Translated from Armenian]

The transcript of a debate between political expert Artur Avtandilyan
and Tigran Kocharyan, a blogger and expert on information security.

Touching on the problems of Russian support for migration from
Armenia, Kocharyan said that it was not Russia’s but rather the
Armenian authorities’ fault that Armenians were leaving their country
for Russia.

“In the recent four years, 10,000 people have emigrated under the
Compatriots project alone,” Kocharyan was quoted as saying, referring
to the Compatriots project launched by the Russian authorities and
recent controversies over its activities in Armenia, and noting that
an even a greater number of Armenians had left Armenia for the USA,
Canada and Russia without being involved in the aforementioned project.

Kocharyan was also quoted as saying that the same scenario worked with
the US green card lottery project or similar migration opportunities
offered to Armenians by Canada, but this did not raise such a stir
as in the case of Russia.

Avtandilyan, in his turn, was quoted as saying that the problem was
that the migration was encouraged at the state level and Armenia
lost is citizens and allowed that to happen. He also expressed
scepticism that Russia could somehow stop the project in Armenia,
since it could create an “unpleasant precedent”, whereas he described
Russia’s all-out presence in Armenia as “expansionism”.

Referring to the recent statements by the Russian ambassador to
Armenia, Vyacheslev Kovalenko, and seconded in a rather undiplomatic
manner by some Russian bloggers, about a special role of Russia in
Armenia, both interlocutors agreed on main points. “Russia has not
yet learned how to talk to other countries,” Kocharyan said, adding
that “the blackmail will not work with Armenia”, like it failed to
work with Latvia, Georgia and other countries. Avtandilyan added
that Armenia needed to have a foreign political alternative, which
“does not have to be anti-Russian in character, but rather will serve
the national interests of Armenia”.

Armenia’s prioritizing foreign partners and Russia’s role was also
discussed in a debate hosted by the private Aravot newspaper on
25 October. The participants in the debate, the leader of the New
Times party Aram Karapetyan and Artur Ghazinyan, Director of Yerevan
State University Centre for European Studies, strongly disagreed on
Armenia’s integration prospects. Karapetyan argued that the EU did not
offer any economic benefits and integration prospects were also very
vague. “The Eurasian Union will be the only way [for Armenia],” the
newspaper quoted Karapetyan as saying and adding that “as to the EU,
it is a question whether that structure is going to involve Armenia”.

He went on, recalling Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan’s statement
that Russia had invested 3bn. dollars in Armenia, while the amount
of EU investments was much smaller.

In response, Ghazinyan said that EU offered sizeable financial support
for Armenia’s development every year. He added that the projected
Eurasian Union member states – Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus – had
“closed systems, such as state monopolies and state intervention in
business, as well as closed political systems”, the choice between
a projected EU integration and fast integration into the Eurasian
Union was a “choice between civilization models” for Armenia.

“We choose the open economic and political system, based on principles
of prevalence of democracy and rights,” Aravot quoted Ghazinyan as
saying. He was also quoted as noting that “Russia was the first among
those responsible for the unresolved status of the Karabakh problem”.

SYRIAN GOVERNMENT ARMY REMOVES ALL REBELS FROM ALEPPO’S ARMENIAN-POPULATED DISTRICT

news.am
October 26, 2012 | 15:41

Units from the Syrian government army have rid all rebel troops from
Aleppo’s Az Zahour Street and As Syriah District, where a great number
of Armenians also live.

Also, the government soldiers saved several civilians whom the
terrorists had kidnapped.

The District residents welcomed the Syrian military servicemen with
gratitude, the state-run Syrian Arab news agency (SANA) reports.

TURKEY’S OPPOSITION LEADER TO VISIT ARMENIAN CHURCH

news.am
October 25, 2012 | 10:01

Leader of Turkey’s main opposition party Kemal Kilicdaroglu will
visit an Armenian church.

Head of the Republican People’s Party will pay a visitto Diyarbakir
mainly populated by Kurds, CNNTurk reports.

He will hold meetings with Mayor Osman Baydemir, Diyarbakir governor
and visit St. Giragos Armenian church.

R renovations at Diyarbakir’s Saint Giragos Armenian Church had
finished in 2011, but the complete renovations of the church complex
will come to an end this year. The Holy Mass, which will be celebrated
on November 4, will be held in the completely renovated church complex.

RUSSIAN ARMENIANS AND AZERIS TO WORK TOWARDS RECONCILIATION

25.10.12 | 11:49

Ara Abrahamyan

Representatives of the Armenian and Azeri diasporas in Russia have
agreed to team up to promote reconciliation between Armenia and
Azerbaijan, locked in a long-standing territorial dispute over
Nagorno-Karabakh, according to the radio Voice of Russia.

At a roundtable in Moscow this week, they decided to form a permanent
joint committee to deal with conflict situations in Russia.

President of the Union of Russian Armenians and UNESCO goodwill
ambassador Ara Abrahamyan was quoted as saying: “We are, all of us,
citizens of Russia. We have nothing to share or dispute here. We should
set an example for, send a reconciliation message to our historical
homelands – Armenia and Azerbaijan”.

OPPOSITION MP CRITICAL OF GOVERNMENT-SUBMITTED BILL

tert.am
25.10.12

No self-respecting government would ever approve a bill on the minimum
monthly wages amounting to 35,000 (less than $90) as, by approving such
a bill, the government would admit its being a poor and backward one.

The economist Zoya Tadevosyan, a member of the opposition bloc
Armenian National Congress (ANC), told Tert.am that she does not see
any economic grounds for the bill.

“In civilized states the minimum wages are normally raised as prices
rise. Since 2007, a 40% price rise has been recorded in Armenia. So
the minimum wages must be raised as much rather than just 7%,”
Tadevosyan said.

By 65 to seven, with 25 abstentions, Armenia’s parliament approved
in Thursday the bill on the minimum monthly wages in its first reading.

The Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) and Armenian Revolutionary
Federation Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) groups abstained from voting,
while the Heritage and ANC groups voted against the bill.

Ms Tadevosyan believes the government has made a political step on
the threshold of presidential election in Armenia, which will be of
no benefit to either Armenian citizens or employers.

“Because the price rise makes people spend their savings – if they
have savings – on food products and services,” she said.

The minimum basket of goods is AMD 120,000 (about $300) in Armenia,
and the minimum monthly wage is nothing but “a mere pittance.”

Mrs Tadevosyan noted that, with the average price rise of 40% since
2007, the prices for meat and butter have shown a rise of 100% and
200% respectively.

The government is the first to benefit from its own step – from
January 1, 2013, tax revenues will double or even triple due to the
new minimum wage rates.

LIFT KILLS TWO, INJURES TWO IN ARMENIA’S CAPITAL

tert.am
25.10.12

At 5:22pm, Armenia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations received a call
on an accident at a newly constructed building in Sasna Tsrer Str.

A lift fell down the shaft, killing two and injuring two others.

Rescuers arrived at the scene and found out that a freight lift, which
had not been examined by technical experts or officially registered
at the Ministry of Emergency Situations, fell down the shaft with
its freight.

Khachik Yepremyan (45) and Gevorg Safaryan (60) were taken to hospital.