“Zhamanak” reflects on the two-month arrest of Syunik’s controversial governor Surik Khachatrian’s son Tigran ordered by the court over his alleged involvement in a violent incident. “The reason why this decision did not create a particularly great public stir is the previous imprisonment of Tigran Khachatrian after the deadly shooting incident in Goris. He was then suspected of murder, but got away with ‘self-defense’ and was released… After all this, when the controversial governor’s son gets arrested today the society only wonders when he is going to be released again,” the paper writes.
The editor of “Aravot” maintains that opposition parties in Armenia have given a “wrong” diagnosis to the situation for years: “And this is one of the reasons why negative tendencies are aggravating and getting stronger. The wrong thing is that in oppositionists’ opinion a dictatorship has been created in Armenia and the heads of state have been dictators during their time in office and, therefore, they must be replaced by ‘patriotic’ democrats and everything will be fine. But our real problems are perhaps even graver. There are mainly three of them: there is no legal mechanism of changing the government in Armenia; the wealth in Armenia is concentrated in the hands of a few government-linked families; Armenia lacks an independent judiciary.”
Under the headline “Devaluation of Struggle Becomes Common Phenomenon” the Zhoghovurd daily writes: “It has already become a tradition to tarnish and devaluate successful initiatives and ideas that elicit a great public response. Every time some initiative achieves success or at least becomes popular we very soon start to witness how it is being gradually ‘debased’. And the remarkable thing is that not always it takes places artificially, in other words, due to a process organized by the authorities especially for that purpose. The process of “depriving one civic initiative or another of its taste” usually takes place on its own.”
(Anush Mkrtchian)