“Zhamanak” reports that supporters of former President Robert Kocharian demonstrated in Yerevan on Tuesday after Armenia’s Court of Appeals allowed investigators to arrest him again. “This is certainly not a new phenomenon, Robert Kocharian has used that tool as part of his legal defense tactic for some time,” writes the paper very critical of the ex-president. “The question is whether the former president will try to switch to a tougher and more radical use of that tool and to create problems for the authorities. That would not be prudent because Kocharian lacks the most important factor possessed by the authorities: strong public support.”
According to “Zhoghovurd,” the head of the Armenian government’s Committee for the Management of State Property, Narek Babayan, continues to demand that a military high school of the Armenian Defense Ministry vacate its expensive premises located in the resort town of Dilijan. The property had been supposed to serve as a resort complex for employees of the State Revenue Committee. The paper says former Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian was right to have it transferred to the military school because in a country remaining in a de facto state of war “it is extremely important that people have incentives to become military officers.” “And given all this, it is weird, to say the least, that Narek Babayan continues to insist that those luxurious conditions are too much for our military and that they can receive military education in more modest conditions.”
“Aravot” says that Kocharian behaves arrogantly during court hearings and his conversations with journalists. “He also frequently lies, in particular about transforming Armenia’s ‘hell’ into ‘paradise’ from 1998 to 2008,” editorializes the paper’s editor, Aram Abrahamian. “But sometimes life is turned into hell by those vicious leaders whose bodyguards kill people for ‘wrongly’ greeting them. “I feel more secure when that person is in jail. But if we put aside emotions, we need to understand in the purely legal sense what the point of arresting the former president is. Kocharian is not the kind of person who would like to flee [the country.] Will he influence the probe of the [March 2008] case? Of course he will. A figure possessing serious financial and media resources has the ample capacity to do.” But Kocharian will also be in a position to exert such influence even from prison, concludes the paper.
(Lilit Harutiunian)
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