“Haykakan Zhamanak” scoffs at Constitutional Court Chairman Hrayr Tovmasian’s latest televised interview in which he compared himself to Armenian soldiers who are deployed on the border with Azerbaijan to defend their homeland. The pro-government paper says that Tovmasian thereby also compared Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and the ruling My Step bloc to Azerbaijan’s rulers extremely hostile to Armenia. “This is a fairly tough statement,” it says. “So tough that even Republicans and Dashnaktsutyun members do not dare to use such wording. Such a vocabulary is more characteristic of the few well-funded and aggressive fringe groups. By making such a statement Hrayr Tovmasian aligned himself to those groups.”
“Aravot” questions, meanwhile, the wisdom of the authorities’ efforts to oust Tovmasian. The paper points out that ever since its establishment in 1996 Armenia’s Constitutional Court has practically always made decisions favorable for the ruling regimes, acting like their “puppet.” “This is a serious problem which requires an institutional solution,” it says. “Going after the current chairman of the Constitutional Court is not such a solution. It will simply prolong the current unenviable state of that body and lay the groundwork for further crises.”
“Zhamanak” reports that Armenia’s Investigative Committee has moved to annul the “illegal” privatization by former senior officials of forests around the resort town of Tsaghkadzor. The paper says law-enforcement authorities are also seeking to nationalize land located in and around a free economic zone near the town of Meghri on the Armenian-Iranian border. It had been privatized by other former government officials. “Those plots were privatized at very low prices for the purpose of being sold back to the state for the free economic zone at higher prices,” writes the paper. It hopes that “the example of Tsaghkadzor will reach Meghri as soon as possible.”
(Lilit Harutiunian)
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