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Press Review


“Haykakan Zhamanak” backs opposition claims that the National Assembly did not ratify on Monday a controversial Russian-Armenian gas agreement. “In order for the results of the vote to be legally certified, the Counting Commission has to make a corresponding decision,” writes the paper. “The commission can make such a decision only by a majority of votes. At least four of the seven members of the commission did not draw up or sign any protocols. That means the agreement was not ratified.”

“Hraparak” notes that four of the six Armenian parties represented in the parliament claim that the agreement was not ratified. “That means the majority of the parliamentary forces jointly and unanimously spurned the agreement,” writes the paper. “This fact isolated Serzh Sarkisian, turned him into the only party responsible for the agreement and stripped him of possibilities of relying on the Armenian people. Serzh Sarkisian has been left alone in his servility towards Russia. Even [Levon] Ter-Petrosian’s assistance, in the form of the latest overtures to the Russian side, would not help him.”

By contrast, “168 Zham” says that the opposition minority achieved nothing with its boycott of the parliament vote. The paper believes that opposition lawmakers should have stayed and voted against the deal with Russia’s Gazprom. It says this would have “allowed future generations to think that Armenia’s capitulation act was adopted with fierce resistance, rather than unanimously.”

Artak Davtian, a parliament deputy from the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), tells “Hayots Ashkhar” that his opposition colleague Zaruhi Postanjian engaged in blatant theft when she collected electronic voting cards of some 20 HHK lawmakers on Monday. “It’s a new practice in our country,” he says. “Such practices must be prevented by legal means. I think that changes need to be made in the parliament’s statutes and the Code of Administrative Offenses. She speaks of the rule of law, human rights, and civilization but she herself flouts both the law and ethnical norms.”

“Zhoghovurd” lists concrete provisions of the Russian-Armenian gas deal which it believes threaten Armenia’s national security. One of them prohibits Armenia from re-exporting natural gas supplied by Gazprom. “This means that Armenia legally cannot supply gas to Nagorno-Karabakh,” comments the paper. “The Republicans claim … that the issue has been [privately] agreed with [Vladimir] Putin. But it is obvious that Gazprom can use such an agreement to demand a halt to gas supplies to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic at any moment.”

(Tigran Avetisian)
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