Gagik Hambaryan, a political scientist, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am that Serzh Sargsyan’s most dangerous rival could only have been Gagik Tsarukyan, since both the parliamentary election results and the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) leader’s rating without the party testified to that. “Even ardent Republicans accept that Gagik Tsarukyan’s rating without the party is higher than the same party’s. And he could have been a dangerous rival for Serzh Sargsyan, because the government hasn’t managed to improve the socio-economic situation in the country for the past 5 years. They say all the time that we overcame the crisis easily, but overcoming that crisis easily was the reason for a huge number
of people to leave the Republic of Armenia, and the government has managed to increase pensions by 2500 AMD once and increase wages by the same 2500 AMD also once. In countries, which are in crisis, it has been done on a larger scale. Let me give the latest example; the Georgian government has managed to reduce the gas prices for its population by 20%-25% through negotiations with Russia,” the political scientist said, being surprised at the fact that our government couldn’t even successfully negotiate the gas price. “You know what, the Armenian gas market is very small for the world-famous Gazprom, they don’t benefit here, because they have bigger markets, where they gain huge amount of money. Therefore, it seems to me that the issue here is politics; one needs good negotiations,” the political scientist thinks.
Nune AREVSHATYAN
