Gagik Tsarukyan, the leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), stated in Brussels yesterday: “It is impossible to struggle against corruption in the country, if that struggle is directed by the main corrupted persons.” www.aravot.am inquired of representatives of different political forces whether this statement could be considered as the first critical remark about the incumbent President of the Republic of Armenia or the target was different.
Stepan Safaryan, the secretary general of the Heritage Party, noted: “Since the Prime Minister talked about anticorruption recently, the Prime Minister is more likely to be the target so far. Well, if it is the pre-election period, and the statement is basically about corruption, which the Prime Minister has talked about, one can assume that a task of changing the Cabinet is undertaken.”
When asked the same question Garnik Margaryan, the leader of the Motherland and Dignity Party, at first said that “Gagik Tsarukyan has become an angel,” then he went into detail: “I have said many times that Gagik Tsarukyan and a couple of dozen oligarchs have monopolized the republic’s wealth and Gagik Tsarukyan is in the top 5. Let him come and I will prove to him – what money he uses for charity, or what he has in Europe. We will say who has what, how they have become a billionaire in a short period of time, being just an ordinary policeman…. Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan, twenty people whose names we don’t tell, but will present proofs are among those. Regardless of what number of members they fabricate, it is done for robbed money, there is no party there.”
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Talking about the statement itself, Mr. Margaryan commented: “A serious process has begun in Europe and particularly in Russia. In Moscow, they don’t pay attention to offices; a huge anticorruption struggle is under way. This is done along with a set of member states of the European Union. Europe and Russia have realized that if they don’t stop corruption, it will threaten the statehood, the national security. Tsarukyan was in Moscow recently, he realized that there was a big state program of stopping corruption there. This is his response. He wants to make Serzh Sargsyan take him seriously by that. The other scenario is that he throws dust in people’s eyes using a part of the money he has stolen to say that he is most honorable man who says that the regime is corrupted…. He was a member of the regime, he is still a member.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
