Manvel Badeyan, the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MP, and Bagrat Asatryan, the Armenian National Congress (ANC) representative and former president of the Central Bank, debated at “Hayeli” (mirror) club on elections, giving election bribe, political, economic crises and other issues.
Commenting on the “About the Responsibility of the Government” interpellation of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), the former president of the Central Bank noted that ARF have become accustomed to doing unfinished things, “Nothing is clearly said. Being for, are against… That’s it. The issue of resignations not of certain persons, but a part of the political stage is raised. ARF is both doing and not doing.”
Mr. Asatryan expressed his displeasure with the harsh response of the President of the Republic of Armenia to Raffi Hovhannisian’s proposals. M. Badeyan was not aware of this, as well as a set of other questions of journalists and was surprised, “What proposals, I don’t know!”
Bagrat Asatryan did not agree to Tigran Sargsyan’s response that there was no crisis in our country for the Cabinet to resign, “It is obvious that Armenia is in political crisis today. The President, this or that force has come with a certain program. Compare the numbers, it is quite the opposite – they promised that we would live better for 5 years, the number of extremely poor has doubled for 3-4 years. We are in a worse condition than in 2008. Certainly, the crisis is there and if one demanded a resignation, it was done for the sake of our country, including those who are in power. I accept Mr. Badeyan, treat him with respect, but I don’t like the attitude he shows, the mask he has put on, because the Republican Party has failed and just has to leave the political stage, other forces must come. We must either develop or make no headway.”
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Mr. Badeyan responded and started to compare with the time period when B. Asatryan was in power. “Show me a country that has a better statistics before the crisis and after it.” B. Asatryan mentioned that examples were many, for example Georgia, Azerbaijan, and it was indisputable that the size of global economy had expanded compared to the pre-crisis one.
In M. Badeyan’s opinion, there is no crisis in Armenia, “Where do you see big political clashes, on the contrary, according to Bagrat Asatryan himself, it was assessed positively insofar as the relations were eased.” Mr. Asatryan interrupted, “People leave this country, this is the tragedy, certainly, there is a political crisis.”
Lusine KHACHATRYAN
