(Saturday, March 26)
“Haykakan Zhamanak” reacts negatively plans by the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) to open a “political school” for its members and supporters. The paper dismisses HHK arguments that political parties in Europe also have such schools. It says that unlike those parties, the HHK remains in power not because of winning democratic elections but because of rigging elections, heavily using government resources and suppressing dissent. The HHK school will therefore be far more similar to training centers that had been operated by the Soviet Communist Party, it says. “That seemingly monolithic Soviet system crumbled in a matter of days because it was based on artificial ideologies and did not tolerate competition,” concludes “Haykakan Zhamanak.”
“Chorrord Ishkhanutyun” also draws parallels between the HHK and the Communist Party. “In those [Soviet] schools, they studied Marxism and Leninism, unmasked the predator essence of international imperialism, and learned how to organize workers’ struggle for the triumph of Communism,” writes the paper. “It is not yet clear just what they are going to teach at the HHK school.”
Speaking to “168 Zham,” political analyst Sergei Minasian suggests that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry did not discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey during his latest visit to Moscow. “That is good because I would not like this issue to be so urgent as to eclipse the events taking place in Syria or Ukraine,” he says. “I think that for Russia and the United States there are more pressing issues having to do with full-scale wars and humanitarian disasters. Therefore, I think that the U.S. and Russia do not feel that the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict carries a serious risk of a full-scale war. On the other hand, the fact that the U.S. and Russia can reach common ground on solving difficult problems in various countries will reflect positively on the work of the [OSCE] Minsk Group.”
“Zhoghovurd” comments on a number of fresh non-combat deaths of Armenian soldiers reported this year. “We have no doubts that the Armenian army command will say that such incidents also happen in our countries,” says the paper. “But the leadership of Armenia’s Defense Ministry and Armed Forces must finally understand that we have no right to allow non-combat casualties as that is not just grim statistics for us.”
(Tigran Avetisian)