“Zhoghovurd” suggests that while the decision on dismantling cafes in the area around the Opera House in Yerevan was taken by the city’s authorities, “the entire government is responsible for it, since such steps are made based on political decisions.” “It is not a coincidence that protests against the dismantling of cafes resulted in some clashes and offensive language was used against the government,” the paper writes, acknowledging that the current government and mayor Hayk Marutian today enjoy “absolute legitimacy” as “all parties, even the ones that lost, recognized the results of the elections.” “Therefore, the government has a corresponding mandate to carry out reforms in a bold manner and even must do so with such a great vote of confidence.”
“Hraparak” argues that while some poor people may welcome the dismantling of cafes owned by wealthy businessman or others may consider it right just to please the new government, it is yet insufficient to speak about justice: “One can speak about freeing the city [green areas from commercial property] when the hotel and mansions in the park at Monument, all structures built in Circular Park, ugly extensions of buildings in the city center, the cafes of [businessman] Samvel Aleksanian and other structures are dismantled.”
On the same subject “Haykakan Zhamanak” writes: “Nevertheless, it is important to understand what positive and negative consequences these actions may have and why the authorities decided to take that step despite realizing what emotions and speculations it will cause. First, the negative is that like in the case with other protests there will always be some groups guided by the former government that will try to provoke clashes with police, chant “Nikol [Pashinian] go away” or “Robert [Kocharian] is president”, thus giving a political coloring to a purely legal process. Secondly, this process may have a negative effect in the short term in terms of falling tax revenues, etc. But still there will clearly be many more positive effects and the increase in the green area is not the most important of them. The most important positive effect will be that it will no longer occur to anyone that they can do business in Armenia in an illegal manner by using their links with the powers that be.”
“168 Zham” criticizes the government for its economic policies. “The impression is that [Prime Minister] Nikol Pashinian’s government has no one who would think about the economy and everyone is busy trying to bring money to the budget, increasing the tax burden for that without thinking about possible consequences. And there is no doubt that these consequences will be painful. The changes in the tax code proposed by the government do not meet the interests of many economic agents. Consumers will also suffer the consequences as the tax burden will increase for them. And it is still a question what the government will get from all this,” the paper writes.
(Artur Papian)
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