(Saturday, November 3)
“Haykakan Zhamanak” ridicules the claim made by former lawmaker Zaruhi Postanjian’s Yerkir Tsirani party on Friday that ex-president Serzh Sarkisian and his son-in-law Mikayel Minasian were “co-authors” of last spring’s “velvet” revolution in Armenia. “The statement was made on the day when Minasian was recalled from his post of ambassador to the Vatican and his father, Ara Minasian, was charged in a fraud case and put on the police’s wanted list. Before that, criminal cases were instituted against Serzh Sarkisian’s brother, Levon Sarkisian, as well as several members of the ex-president’s extended family. So, it turns out Sarkisian and Minasian organized something that boomeranged themselves,” the paper writes.
“Zhamanak” warns acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s political team against repeating the mistakes of its predecessor – the parliamentary majority of the former ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK): “Such a mistake can be manifested in complete reliance on Pashinian and considering him indispensable. If the Pashinian team makes the same mistake, considering that the task of the parliamentary majority is to vote for anything coming from Pashinian, the consequences for this majority will be no less painful than they were for the HHK.”
“Zhoghovurd”, meanwhile, notes another risk of Pashinian’s Civil Contract Party repeating the fate of the HHK: “A number of officials and those who count on getting government positions soon these days have been declaring about their joining the Civil Contract Party. The most recent example is the statement by the head of the State Control Service, David Sanasarian, about his quitting the Heritage Party and joining the Civil Contract Party. No matter how many times Sanasarian repeats that “together we will do everything to ensure that no new HHK appears in power,” with his move he himself has contributed to the penetration of “HHK morals” into the new government. So, Pashinian and the leadership of the Civil Contract Party now face the task of preventing party monopolization of the government system.”
The editor of “Aravot” looks back at the evolution of the proportional electoral system in Armenia as opposed to single-seat races to the country’s parliament. Aram Abrahamian suggests that “majoritarian” votes have contributed to the appearance of ‘non-political’ figures in the parliaments of the previous convocations. After the failure of the Pashinian government to push through an electoral reform scrapping so-called ‘regional lists’ of candidates, the daily’s editor still expects that the popular acting prime minister’s My Step alliance will win a stable majority in the next parliament. “The number of rating or non-rating deputies will not change much, but the current electoral system will affect the quality as the factions of the pro-government alliance and the Prosperous Armenia Party will have more ‘non-political’ figures than good or bad politicians,” he adds.
(Tatev Danielian)