In an interview with “Hraparak,” Ruben Hayrapetian, chairman of the Armenian Football Federation, comments on the strong performance of the national team in the qualification campaign for the 2012 European championship. Hayrapetian says he hopes that the team will win its two remaining games and qualify for the tournament to be co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland.
“Despite sensational and somewhat shocking revelations, those unmasked as a result of WikiLeaks disclosures take that for granted,” writes “Yerkir.” “Everyone tells themselves that those are unofficial and not credible reports. They are lies, that is. But if they are lies, why aren’t they refuted?” The paper says the leaked U.S. diplomatic cables would have rocked the Armenian political scene had they been taken more seriously by local government officials and politicians. “The government system, political and public forces would have collapsed [in that case.] There would have been a deficit of trust, to say the least,” it says.
Writing in “Haykakan Zhamanak,” Sasun Mikaelian, a former parliament deputy and a prominent member of the opposition Armenian National Congress (HAK), says the freezing of the HAK’s negotiations with the ruling coalition “finally proved that it’s impossible to do solve issues with these authorities through dialogue.” Mikaelian says the authorities were never serious about the dialogue and are now actively preparing for “yet another election falsification.”
“That means that even if the long-awaited pre-term elections take place, the authorities will seek to ensure their reproduction with tested methods: ballot stuffing, bullying, widespread vote bribes and number fixing,” claims Mikaelian. “We as a nation must never allow that.”
“Aravot” reports that local government officials have told taxi drivers in central Yerevan that from now on they must pay municipal authorities 10,000 ($27) each year. “This ‘nice’ news simply incensed the taxi drivers,” says the paper. “In their view, the Armenian government is creating new problems for taxi drivers before solving existing ones,” it says.
“Our problem is not individual oligarchs but the entire domestic oligarchy, which is provincial, greedy and inept,” writes “Hayots Ashkhar.” “This problem must not be solved through a revolution, which would at best lead to a temporary restoration of competitive oligarchy with all its ugly manifestations. Oligarchy is not the best thing. It’s just the only possible thing in the vast majority of cases.”
(Tigran Avetisian)