(Saturday, May 23)
According to “Kapital,” the Armenian financial company Cascade Investment expects the Armenian dram to regain some of its lost value against the U.S. dollar in the next few months. The company has pointed to a decrease in external inflationary pressures on the Armenian economy and rising demand for the dram in the domestic currency market.
“Hraparak,” meanwhile, quotes Bagrat Asatrian, a former governor of the Armenian Central Bank, as again criticizing the Armenian authorities’ exchange rate policy. Asatrian believes that the authorities wasted at least $600 million of Armenia’s hard currency reserves to shore up the dram in the months before its drastic depreciation. “The public is looking back and saying, ‘What are you doing? You are only filling up the pockets of those individuals who are engaged in imports.’ The entire [government] policy is aimed at benefiting some individuals,” he claims.
“Hayots Ashkhar” believes that a general amnesty for all arrested members of the Armenian opposition would be yet another manifestation of President Serzh Sarkisian’s “goodwill and generosity.” “Furthermore, if President Serzh Sarkisian comes up with an amnesty proposal [to the National Assembly] the most sensible interpretation of that step would be that the head of state is giving the radical opposition and its leader Levon Ter-Petrosian an additional and last chance to return from a revolutionary and confrontational impasse and street politics to the field of normal political relations,” says the pro-presidential daily.
“The pre-election period has seen no political debates, and it’s the [May 31 election] contenders that are primarily to blame for that,” Armen Rustamian, a leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), tells “Aravot.” “Our people have still not realized in what elections they are going to take part.” Rustamian says some parties have tried to downplay the importance of the mayoral polls, while others (presumably Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress) have portrayed them as “second presidential elections.” “But it’s good that there have been some changes in their approaches,” he says.
“An attempt is now being made to put the government pyramid at the disposal of a single person, Serzh Sarkisian,” writes “Zhamanak.” “Why is Serzh Sarkisian doing that?” Because, claims the opposition paper, he is still “in debt” to former President Robert Kocharian for the bloody enforcement of the official results of the February 2008 presidential election. “Serzh Sarkisian has only one way of repaying that debt -- to gobble up everything: the public, the economy, politics,” it says.
(Aghasi Yenokian)
According to “Kapital,” the Armenian financial company Cascade Investment expects the Armenian dram to regain some of its lost value against the U.S. dollar in the next few months. The company has pointed to a decrease in external inflationary pressures on the Armenian economy and rising demand for the dram in the domestic currency market.
“Hraparak,” meanwhile, quotes Bagrat Asatrian, a former governor of the Armenian Central Bank, as again criticizing the Armenian authorities’ exchange rate policy. Asatrian believes that the authorities wasted at least $600 million of Armenia’s hard currency reserves to shore up the dram in the months before its drastic depreciation. “The public is looking back and saying, ‘What are you doing? You are only filling up the pockets of those individuals who are engaged in imports.’ The entire [government] policy is aimed at benefiting some individuals,” he claims.
“Hayots Ashkhar” believes that a general amnesty for all arrested members of the Armenian opposition would be yet another manifestation of President Serzh Sarkisian’s “goodwill and generosity.” “Furthermore, if President Serzh Sarkisian comes up with an amnesty proposal [to the National Assembly] the most sensible interpretation of that step would be that the head of state is giving the radical opposition and its leader Levon Ter-Petrosian an additional and last chance to return from a revolutionary and confrontational impasse and street politics to the field of normal political relations,” says the pro-presidential daily.
“The pre-election period has seen no political debates, and it’s the [May 31 election] contenders that are primarily to blame for that,” Armen Rustamian, a leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), tells “Aravot.” “Our people have still not realized in what elections they are going to take part.” Rustamian says some parties have tried to downplay the importance of the mayoral polls, while others (presumably Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress) have portrayed them as “second presidential elections.” “But it’s good that there have been some changes in their approaches,” he says.
“An attempt is now being made to put the government pyramid at the disposal of a single person, Serzh Sarkisian,” writes “Zhamanak.” “Why is Serzh Sarkisian doing that?” Because, claims the opposition paper, he is still “in debt” to former President Robert Kocharian for the bloody enforcement of the official results of the February 2008 presidential election. “Serzh Sarkisian has only one way of repaying that debt -- to gobble up everything: the public, the economy, politics,” it says.
(Aghasi Yenokian)