(Saturday, July 9)
“There is a huge gap between Armenia’s real capabilities and officially declared challenges,” writes “Chorrord Ishkhanutyun.” “The public has been told for almost 20 years that meeting those challenges is a very realistic task and it’s just that we are not lucky enough, circumstances are not good, they don’t like Armenians or some government structures have underperformed.” The pro-opposition paper says that the Armenian authorities will never admit that they deceived the people to cling to power and enrich themselves. “The fact is that Armenia lacks the resources to solve those issues,” it says. “Because of that the authorities shift responsibility for overcoming those challenges to others. They join the [Russian-led] Eurasian Economic Union, effectively hand over our air defense to Russia and do other things like that, hoping that Russia will feed us.”
“Haykakan Zhamanak” reports that the Armenian government plans to buy four new wheels, presumably for Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian’s limousine, that will cost it around $1,000 each. The paper reminds readers that only two months ago Abrahamian pledged to streamline government expenditures for cost-saving purposes.
“168 Zham” claims that the normalization of Russian-Turkish relations will hurt Armenia’s tourism industry which hoped to attract more Russian tourists after they were effectively banned by Moscow from spending their holidays in Turkey late last year.
(Anush Mkrtchian)