Thursday,
New Armenian Government Structure Still Not Determined
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian holds a cabinet meeting in Yerevan,
.
Forty days after his victory in Armenia’s snap parliamentary elections, Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian said Thursday that he has still not made a final
decision on the structure of his new cabinet and will therefore not appoint all
of its members for now.
Pashinian was formally reappointed by President Armen Sarkissian as prime
minister on Monday. Under the Armenian constitution, he has to name members of
his cabinet and ask Sarkisian to appoint them within the next five days.
The premier will then have 20 days to submit the government’s five-year policy
program to the new Armenian parliament. The program’s approval by the National
Assembly will amount to a vote of confidence.
“By law, the government is deemed formed when two-thirds of its members are
appointed,” Pashinian said at a meeting of his outgoing cabinet. “We will
follow that path: two-thirds of the government members will be appointed while
the others will not be appointed until we ascertain every detail of the changes
in the government’s structure.”
“One thing is clear: the number of ministries will be reduced. We just need to
manage this process without shocks and in a maximally smooth and predictable
way,” he added.
A government bill circulated last month calls for reducing the number of
ministries from 17 to 12. It would close the Ministry of Diaspora and merge
four other ministries with different agencies. It is not yet clear how many
civil servants would be laid off as a result.
The bill sparked street protests in December by hundreds of Diaspora and
culture ministry employees fearing a loss of their jobs. They denounced it as
hasty and ill-thought-out. Government officials responded that the authorities
may still revise the proposed changes.
Pashinian last week reaffirmed his pre-election pledges to downsize the
government.
The controversial bill would also abolish the post of first deputy prime
minister held by Ararat Mirzoyan, a close Pashinian associate, until he was
elected parliament speaker on Monday.
Pashinian’s two other deputies, Mher Grigorian and Tigran Avinian, were
formally reappointed late on Wednesday.
Human Rights Watch Praises New Armenian Leadership
• Heghine Buniatian
GERMANY -- Kenneth Roth, executive director of the Human Rights Watch, speaks
at a press conference during which he presented its annual report for 2019, in
Berlin,
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday commended Armenia’s new authorities for
holding general elections widely recognized as democratic and “reviving” a
criminal investigation into the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan.
“International observers found that the December parliamentary vote was
conducted with ‘broad public trust,’ and was free from abuses that marred past
elections, including vote buying and pressure on voters,” the New York-based
watchdog said in a statement attached to its annual report on human rights
practices in more than 100 countries.
“Ensuring a free and fair vote is an important first step for Armenia’s new
leadership,” the statement quoted Giorgi Gogia, HRW’s associate Europe and
Central Asia director, as saying.
“But it’s only a beginning. The authorities need to use this mandate to push
through reforms to address the human rights problems that brought people to the
streets,” Gogia added in reference to last spring’s “velvet revolution” that
brought Nikol Pashinian to power.
HRW’s World Report 2019 says that Pashinian “inherited a country plagued with
corruption and myriad human rights problems,” including police brutality,
domestic violence and discrimination against LGBT people.
“In a commendable move, the new authorities made progress in existing
investigations into abuses that had been stalled for years,” it says,
referring, among other things, to the renewed investigation into the deadly
breakup of 2008 post-election protests in Yerevan.
The HRW report cites criminal charges brought in July against former President
Robert Kocharian and two retired generals accused of illegally using Armenian
army units against opposition supporters protesting against alleged fraud in
the February 2008 presidential election. “The previous investigation was
one-sided, with 52 protesters sent to prison,” it says.
Kocharian, who was again arrested in December, strongly denies the accusations,
saying that they are part of a political “vendetta” launched by Prime Minister
Pashinian. The latter was one of the main speakers at the 2008 protests and
spent about two years in prison because of that.
“As the authorities deal with past grievances, they should fully respect due
process rights for all detainees and ensure independence of the judiciary,”
said HRW.
The watchdog also urged the authorities in Yerevan to tackle domestic violence
and discrimination against LGBT people and ensure “quality education” for
children with disabilities.
“The [former] authorities approved an action plan in February to carry out the
2017 domestic violence law, but the [current] government needs to increase the
number of shelter spaces for domestic violence survivors, establish state-run
shelters, and conduct public awareness campaigns about the issue,” said the HRW
statement.
“The authorities also need to address widespread harassment, discrimination,
and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people,” it added.
“Political parties and some politicians tried to exploit widespread homophobia
and made hateful and derogatory comments during the pre-election period.”
Former Minister Wanted For Corruption
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Environment Minister Aram Harutiunian speaks at a news briefing in
Yerevan, 30Jan2012.
A law-enforcement body on Thursday asked a Yerevan court to issue an arrest
warrant for Armenia’s former Environment Minister Aram Harutiunian after
formally accusing him of receiving $14 million in bribes.
The Special Investigative Service (SIS) reiterated prosecutors’ recent
allegations that an Armenian businesswoman, Silva Hambardzumian, paid the money
in 2008 in return for obtaining a dozen mining licenses from Harutiunian’s
ministry.
Hambardzumian claimed to have bribed Harutiunian through several intermediaries
close to him when she spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) in late
October. She said that the mining licenses were subsequently revoked and that
she never got her money back.
Armenia -- Businesswoman Silva Hambardzumian speaks to RFE/RL, 31Oct, 2018.
Harutiunian served as minister from 2007-2014 and was elected to the Armenian
parliament in 2017 on then President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party’s
ticket. The prosecutors attempted to arrest him in early December.
The outgoing parliament, in which the Republicans had the largest group,
declined to lift Harutiunian’s immunity from prosecution, however. It was
formally replaced on Monday by a new National Assembly elected in the December
9 snap elections.
Harutiunian has still not publicly commented on the corruption accusations. His
whereabouts have been unknown for the past several weeks. Some Armenian media
outlets have suggested that he may have fled the country.
Hambardzumian allegedly paid the first installments of the bribes, worth $6
million, in cash.
According to an SIS statement, she wired the rest of the money to bank accounts
in the United Arab Emirates. Harutiunian subsequently transferred the sum to
the Swiss bank account of an “international company” linked to him, said the
statement.
Armenian Government Reports Major Rise In Tax Revenue
• Nane Sahakian
Armenia - The State Revenue Committee headquarters in Yerevan.
Armenia’s State Revenue Committee (SRC) has reported a more than 14 percent
increase in the amount of taxes and customs duties collected by it in 2018.
The SRC chief, Davit Ananian, said on Wednesday the total tax revenues worth
1.3 trillion drams ($2.7 billion) also exceeded the Armenian government’s 2018
target by 3.5 percent. He attributed the major increase to SRC efforts to
improve tax collection and administration.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government pledged to crack down on widespread
tax evasion when it took office in May. Ananian promised at the time that its
tax revenues “will be substantially higher than planned” this year.
According to Pashinian, over the next two months alone the SRC recovered more
than 20 billion drams ($42 million) of unpaid taxes from 73 companies.
The 2019 state budget commits the government to increasing its budgetary
revenues by another 15 percent this year. This would enable the government to
further cut the budget deficit while boosting public spending by around 12
percent.
Armenian tax revenue rose by more than 7 percent in 2017. The improvement was
particularly visible in the national customs service long regarded as one of
the country’s most corrupt government agencies.
Ananian, who served as a deputy finance minister before taking over the SRC,
acknowledged in May that his predecessor, Vartan Harutiunian, tackled the
informal sector of the Armenian economy “quite effectively.” But he said the
fight against tax fraud will be tougher and “even more effective” during his
tenure.
Press Review
“Zhamanak” quotes Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying on Wednesday
that Moscow expects progress in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks in 2019.
“Lavrov did not specify what form of progress he imagines,” writes the paper.
“Instead, he said that Baku’s readiness for a settlement needs to be assisted
and that he hopes that Yerevan will reciprocate.” The paper is worried that
Moscow expects the Armenian side to make territorial concessions to Azerbaijan
and get “nothing” in return. It is confident that Nikol Pashinian would not
agree to “Lavrov’s plan.”
“Zhoghovurd” says that Armenian-Azerbaijani talks have continued intensively
since the “velvet revolution” in Armenia despite the fact that Pashinian and
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have not officially met yet. The foreign
ministers of the two countries met in Paris on Wednesday for the fourth time in
six months. According to the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE
Minsk, Group, Zohrab Mnatsakanian and Elmar Mammadyarov agreed on the need to
prepare Armenians and Azerbaijanis for peace. The paper says that neither the
Armenian nor the Azerbaijani government has done that until now. “Instead,
Azerbaijan has for years disseminated Armenophobia,” it says.
“Aravot” disagrees with those critics of the current Armenian government who
draw parallels between Pashinian’s My Step bloc and Serzh Sarkisian’s
Republican Party (HHK). “If you can afford a car but choose to demonstratively
ride in a trolley you are a hypocrite,” writes the paper. “But if you build
huge mansions whose rooms you have trouble finding or move around in a
motorcade of four or five cars that is unacceptable.” It says there was nothing
wrong with Pashinian’s decision to organize a dinner party at a restaurant
outside Yerevan for the newly elected parliamentarians representing My Step.
(Sargis Harutyunyan)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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