“We share the responsibility of the previous cabinets”

Yesterday the Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan answered the questions of the journalists

–          The Dashnaktsutyun presented decision draft that demanded the resignation of the cabinet, how will you comment on this and the notion that this cabinet shifts onto two previous cabinets the misfortunes of the present cabinet, as Hovik Abrahamyan said.

–          I would suggest in the first place that you be acquainted with the responses of the cabinet that we gave to the ARF claims. I think that a big desire is needed to find an intention like that in our clarifications as shifting the guilt onto the previous cabinets. There is no such thing, because the phenomena are discussed in the clarifications, the phenomena that exist in the economy today and what weak and strong sides the crisis uncovered in our economic system. We have the courage and honestly presented those weak sides that our economic system had. And those lessons we learned; i.e. the level of diversification of our economy was quite low and it made us very vulnerable during the Global Financial Crisis. And that was the very reason why we had a big economic collapse. Since in the field of construction, which was one of the number one branches in the economic structure, we had 43 percent collapse; certainly, all our indexes dramatically decreased. It is understandable that it showed the vulnerability of the economy. We have shown this in our analytical paper; we will put it on our website, you can look through that and give your own assessments whether those are professional comments or political documents.

–          It was printed in the press that you are very depressed with that criticism of Dashnaktsutyun and, moreover, you are intending to address an equivalent compromising answer.

–          I am not depressed by those questions of Dashnaktsutyun at all; they are our colleagues, we have a lot of respect for them, moreover, after getting this interpellation I invited them over, a discussion took place, we tried to give a detailed answer to their questions, and it is a normal, ordinary dialogue between the government and the ARF  and there is no reason to be angry here. As to finding compromising evidence, then the three-year experience of ours proves that it is not our method. We do not use such methods, because they are unacceptable for us. The peculiarity about our cabinet is that we find out our problems by ourselves, present it for the public judgment, because that is the guarantee that those problems will be solved. And those problems that we uncover today in our document are our problems and we do not separate previous cabinets from us, because we guarantee the continuity, also share the responsibility of the previous cabinets, we are responsible both for the achievements and drawbacks that have been and exist today. And if you paid attention, we speak firstly of those problems that exist today and that concern us.

–          However, the Dashnaktsutyun arouse the issue of impeachment of the cabinet.

–          It is normal, it is a form of political struggle that our colleagues have chosen, I think the goal is to increase their party’s popularity to enjoy the people’s trust during the elections and get votes. This is a normal way of struggle and I call upon you to treat normally this kind of a manner of civilized struggle. I would just ask our colleagues to avoid attributing things to us that we have not said and have not stated. I.e. accusing us of trying to shift the guilt onto the previous cabinets is unacceptable, because we ourselves speak of our responsibility for the reforms carried out by the previous cabinets and guarantee the continuity. We carry out the policy adopted by the previous cabinets.

–          How do you assess the rumors about the dialogue with the opposition and do you not think that there is a lack of honesty?

–          Generally speaking, assessing the honesty is a very hard thing to do, particularly in the political field; our people will assess. There is a political struggle going on, it is clear the more we approach the elections the more acute that struggle will be and it is a subjective category whether they are honest or dishonest. The historical experience shows that those win who say the truth to the people, because sooner or later the time tells what is real.