Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian criticized the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) on Friday for promising that its wealthy leader Gagik Tsarukian will invest more in the Armenian economy if the BHK does well in the upcoming general elections.
A top BHK figure, Naira Zohrabian, gave such a promise when she urged voters to back the BHK earlier this week.
“It’s wrong to link votes with investments in the sense that that is a kind of symbol ofold Armenia,” Pashinian said at a campaign rally held in Abovian, a town just north of Yerevan that has long been a Tsarukian stronghold.
“A key specificity of old Armenia’s economy was that you could see 90 percent of [wealthy] Armenian investors [hold seats] in the parliament. We have changed that logic. You have changed that logic,” he told supporters.
“So I think it’s imply incorrect to say ‘vote for us so that there are investments’ or ‘we invest so that you vote for us.’ That is not a [proper] logic for new Armenia.”
“We guarantee the security of everyone’s investments,” added Pashinian, who has repeatedly pledged to separate business from politics since coming to power in May in a wave of anti-government mass protests.
Tsarukian and his party supported the protests during their final phase. The BHK received four ministerial posts in Pashinian’s cabinet formed in May. The prime minister fired those ministers in October, however, accusing the BHK of secretly collaborating with Armenia’s former leadership to delay the holding of snap parliamentary elections.
Tsarukian has since been careful not to publicly criticize Pashinian, even though the BHK is regarded as one of the main election challengers of the premier’s My Step alliance.
Campaigning for the last parliamentary elections held in April 2017, the tycoon pledged to attract as much as $15 billion in investments in Armenia in case of his party’s victory. The BHK finished second in the polls.
Tsarukian again pledged to cut taxes and interest rates when he took his latest election campaign to the southern Ararat and Vayots Dzor provinces on Friday. He said that they are set too high at present.
“During economic crises failure to cut taxes means that businesses go bankrupt and people lose their jobs and rely on poverty benefits,” he told a rally held in Masis, a small town in Ararat.
Addressing supporters in Vayots Dzor, Tsarukian again touted his extensive business experience, saying that he would use it to improve the socioeconomic situation in the country. “I did not graduate from Harvard but I have a lot of relevant experience,” he told supporters in the provincial capital Yeghegnadzor chanting “Tsarukian!”