“The parliamentary opposition has been deprived of its trump card which it has been citing for months. Robert Kocharian has easily gotten rid of the referendum headache,” “Aravot” says, commenting on Monday’s vote in the National Assembly. “All of this was quite foreseeable.” The opposition is just too underrepresented in the parliament. “It appears that the opposition was trying to play for time and constantly talk about the referendum of confidence just to exert psychological pressure on Kocharian. The authorities reacted quite nervously to that talk. That is why they promptly included the issue on the [parliament] agenda and got it out of their way.”
“There is no smell of revolution or regime change in Armenia,” writes “Azg.” “There are no prerequisites for removing Kocharian from power in the near future as well. It’s not that Armenia’s president is good or bad. It’s just that there is no charismatic leader like [Georgia’s Mikhail] Saakashvili in our country. And for the West, the Armenian opposition is not impressive and none one there is betting on it.”
According to “Iravunk,” the experience of the past seven years shows that the greatest danger facing Armenia’s incumbent president is not the opposition or public opinion but “forces inside the regime that at a certain stage are not willing to share responsibility with the president and opt for a palace coup, coordinating their actions with some opposition forces.”
In an interview with “Hayots Ashkhar, Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian stands by its view that the Armenian opposition should not have voiced its grievances against the government at the January session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He says the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh is far more important than the referendum of confidence in Kocharian. “We simply can not fail to act there in a united front given that the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh and numerous regional problems will constantly confront us in the Council of Europe.”
“Exactly six years ago [the President] Levon Ter-Petrosian withdrew from power,” “Haykakan Zhamanak” writes in a front-page editorial. The paper, sympathetic to the Armenian ex-president, believes that the regime change has not lived up to popular expectations. “As a result of Ter-Petrosian’s resignation Armenians expected a so-called pro-Armenian solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. However, by all standards we are now farther away from the problem’s pro-Armenian solution than we were in 1998. Ter-Petrosian’s administration made a decision to resolve the problem, whereas the current authorities have only been pursuing a policy of dragging out such a settlement.” That delay is costing both Armenia and Karabakh dearly. “There has been no political progress in Armenia since 1998. It is therefore meaningless to speak of progress in any other sphere.”
(Vache Sarkisian)
“There is no smell of revolution or regime change in Armenia,” writes “Azg.” “There are no prerequisites for removing Kocharian from power in the near future as well. It’s not that Armenia’s president is good or bad. It’s just that there is no charismatic leader like [Georgia’s Mikhail] Saakashvili in our country. And for the West, the Armenian opposition is not impressive and none one there is betting on it.”
According to “Iravunk,” the experience of the past seven years shows that the greatest danger facing Armenia’s incumbent president is not the opposition or public opinion but “forces inside the regime that at a certain stage are not willing to share responsibility with the president and opt for a palace coup, coordinating their actions with some opposition forces.”
In an interview with “Hayots Ashkhar, Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian stands by its view that the Armenian opposition should not have voiced its grievances against the government at the January session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He says the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh is far more important than the referendum of confidence in Kocharian. “We simply can not fail to act there in a united front given that the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh and numerous regional problems will constantly confront us in the Council of Europe.”
“Exactly six years ago [the President] Levon Ter-Petrosian withdrew from power,” “Haykakan Zhamanak” writes in a front-page editorial. The paper, sympathetic to the Armenian ex-president, believes that the regime change has not lived up to popular expectations. “As a result of Ter-Petrosian’s resignation Armenians expected a so-called pro-Armenian solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. However, by all standards we are now farther away from the problem’s pro-Armenian solution than we were in 1998. Ter-Petrosian’s administration made a decision to resolve the problem, whereas the current authorities have only been pursuing a policy of dragging out such a settlement.” That delay is costing both Armenia and Karabakh dearly. “There has been no political progress in Armenia since 1998. It is therefore meaningless to speak of progress in any other sphere.”
(Vache Sarkisian)