“Hayots Ashkhar” says Armenia’s democratization is not necessarily a good idea because “democracy is capable of much more efficient murder than an authoritarian system.” “The history of democracy is a history of massacres, death camps and total brutality,” says the pro-presidential paper. “Democracy has no other history. A people are not governed by law, it itself forms and, if necessary, amends laws. No tyrant, no dictator is capable of carrying out a genocide. It is ludicrous to blame dictatorships for the Holocaust or the GULAG. A dictatorship is physically unable to massacre that many people. A dictator is powerless without popular enthusiasm.”
“Hayk” reports that Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian presented Paruyr Hayrikian, a prominent Soviet-era dissident, with a pistol Tuesday on the occasion of his 60th birthday anniversary. “Why representatives of the regime worship weapons so much is not difficult to guess,” says the opposition daily. “We hope that there will be soberly thinking people in the police who … will closely monitor Hayrikian and his gun.”
In an interview with “Hraparak,” former Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian comments on Russian criticism of President Serzh Sarkisian’s decision to bestow a state medal to his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili. “Giving or not giving medals is our business,” he says. “Nobody else must decide that. Whether giving such a medal [to Saakashvili] was a right decision, considering Georgian-Armenian relations and other interests and issues, is a different matter.” Oskanian is worried about the very fact of Russian discontent with these and other steps taken by Sarkisian in the international arena. Armenia, he says, seems to have abandoned its “complementary” foreign policy.
“What the prime minister enthusiastically spoke about yesterday has for years been said by the government’s opponents,” “Haykakan Zhamanak” says, commenting on Tigran Sarkisian’s Tuesday statements on problems facing the Armenian economy. The paper says that with his unusually frank comments Sarkisian wanted to tell the public that he is not to blame for the country’s socioeconomic woes. “This is how he will justify his inactivity both in the past and in the future,” it says.
(Tigran Avetisian)
“Hayk” reports that Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian presented Paruyr Hayrikian, a prominent Soviet-era dissident, with a pistol Tuesday on the occasion of his 60th birthday anniversary. “Why representatives of the regime worship weapons so much is not difficult to guess,” says the opposition daily. “We hope that there will be soberly thinking people in the police who … will closely monitor Hayrikian and his gun.”
In an interview with “Hraparak,” former Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian comments on Russian criticism of President Serzh Sarkisian’s decision to bestow a state medal to his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili. “Giving or not giving medals is our business,” he says. “Nobody else must decide that. Whether giving such a medal [to Saakashvili] was a right decision, considering Georgian-Armenian relations and other interests and issues, is a different matter.” Oskanian is worried about the very fact of Russian discontent with these and other steps taken by Sarkisian in the international arena. Armenia, he says, seems to have abandoned its “complementary” foreign policy.
“What the prime minister enthusiastically spoke about yesterday has for years been said by the government’s opponents,” “Haykakan Zhamanak” says, commenting on Tigran Sarkisian’s Tuesday statements on problems facing the Armenian economy. The paper says that with his unusually frank comments Sarkisian wanted to tell the public that he is not to blame for the country’s socioeconomic woes. “This is how he will justify his inactivity both in the past and in the future,” it says.
(Tigran Avetisian)