Lragir.am welcomes Justice Minister Rustam Badasian’s assurances that Armenia should not again be turned into a presidential republic as a result of constitutional changes planned by the authorities. The publication says that Serzh Sarkisian may have introduced the existing parliamentary system of government in order to extend his rule but he “wily-nilly did us a favor” in the end. It says that for all its shortcomings the parliamentary system increases Armenia’s chances of becoming an established democracy.
“Our state does not have a history of 250 years of nonstop statehood and this is why our society has no tradition of [moral] ‘red lines,’” writes “Aravot.” “The only red line defined in the last 30 years is that Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) cannot be part of Azerbaijan.” The paper says that successive Armenian governments “did not care about what moral principles our state must be based on and what must definitely be rejected by the society. “Is violence beyond the red line for solving political issues in the country?” it asks. “No, it’s not. Members of the armed group that seized a police base and killed at least one policeman [in Yerevan in 2016] are very proud of their ‘heroism’ and that pride is shared by a considerable part of the public.”
“Haykakan Zhamanak” reacts to the latest harsh verbal attacks on the current government launched by Serzh Sarkisian’s son-in-law, Mikael Minasian.In a Facebook post, Minasian also blamed the government for the existing “atmosphere of hatred and intolerance” in Armenia. “Mikael Minasian presumably called a general mobilization [of supporters,] and this means that former senior officials, who lost not only their positions but also opportunities for doing business in privileged conditions, must be the first to start an active struggle against the authorities,” writes the pro-government paper. It claims that Minasian also counts on the backing of “representative of the criminal underworld,” “former oligarchs” and Sarkisian’s political “clients.” “The authorities have only one resource for countering that: the support of the majority of the public,” concludes the paper.
(Lilit Harutiunian)
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