“Hraparak” reacts to the opposition GALA party’s decision to end its boycott of Gyumri’s municipal assembly. The paper notes that GALA is the most radical of the three opposition parties that won seats in the local legislature last October. “So the Gyumri opposition has laid down its arms and will attend council sessions starting from September,” it says. Artur Baghdasarian’s Armenian Revival party stopped boycotting its sessions earlier this summer. The paper predicts that Armenian Revival will also end a similar opposition boycott of the municipal council of another city, Vanadzor. It says that these opposition groups must not be denounced by their supporters because the boycotts were never going to make a difference.
“Haykakan Zhamanak” says that Prime Minister Karen Karapetian went on a short vacation this week despite continuing wildfires in two different parts of Armenia. By contrast, President Serzh Sarkisian held an emergency meeting with relevant government officials and issued orders to them. “This situation is a reflection of political realities, rather than coincidence,” comments the paper. “Only some members of the current government were handpicked by Karapetian. The others are beyond his control and professional sympathy because they were appointed either directly by Serzh Sarkisian or as a result of the coalition deal between the [ruling] HHK and Dashnaktsutyun. The two ministers responsible for the wildfires belong to the latter category.”
Interviewed by “Aravot,” Zoya Tadevosian, a senior member of Levon Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK), criticizes the Armenian authorities’ treatment of radical opposition members who seized a police station in Yerevan last year. Tadevosian stresses that she continues to agree with the HAK’s strong disapproval of the deadly attack that was launched by the gunmen. She says at the same time that they “thereby sought to arouse a fighting spirit in the people.” “The fact that they laid down their arms testifies to that,” she adds.
(Tigran Avetisian)
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