“Zhamanak” comments on the statements made by head of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia’s parliamentary faction Vahram Baghdasarian who said, in connection with opposition calls for disobedience and street protests, that law-enforcement bodies should not just do nothing about it. “Vahram Baghdasarian’s statements show that there is a certain amount of anxiety within the government circles and that the system is not all that sure that it can resist if public mobilization does take place. Therefore, the ruling party’s top lawmaker suggests preventing the actions,” the daily writes.
Evaluating the situation in Armenia’s second largest city of Gyumri in the weeks before the December 6 referendum on constitutional amendments, “Asparez” writes: “During the 2013 presidential election Samvel Balasanian, who had succeeded Vardan Ghukasian as mayor, stated that he supported Serzh Sarkisian but, in fact, did not use his administrative resource to make citizens go to the polls and vote for Sarkisian. At that time, he was still a member of the Prosperous Armenia Party, although it was Sarkisian who had promoted him to the mayoral post. Today we see a new test for the Gyumri mayor – whether to support or not the referendum concocted by Sarkisian that people do not even want to hear about.”
“Hraparak” reacts to the recent decision by the Constitutional Court that essentially upheld media rights to protect confidential sources of information. The paper’s editor writes: “After our struggle that lasted for a year and a half we have finally achieved victory. And this victory not only makes us enjoy the fact that justice has been done, but also causes some pain and sorrow to us, because in our three-tier judicial system no one dared to go deep into law and make a verdict in our favor.”
“Chorrord Ishkhanutyun” reports that Russia’s pro-Kremlin film director Nikita Mikhalkov is going to make a TV series about prominent Russian 19th-century writer and diplomat Alexander Griboyedov. It says that in the film the author is going to show that before the 19th century there were almost no Armenians in Karabakh and that it was Griboyedov who brought 40,000 Armenians from Persia and let them settle in the territory of Karabakh. “[Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev invited Mikhalkov to Baku and gave him some medal and Armenian historians and archeologists immediately stated that it is foolish to say that before the beginning of the 19th century Karabakh was not populated by Armenians. It is, of course, foolish, but when this foolishness becomes a TV series with a large budget shown to millions of people, to fight against it with only timid interviews is even more foolish,” the paper writes.
(Tigran Avetisian)