For “Free Democrats” party, who’s taking part in the elections, safety is a wide concept that starts from human rights and ends with security issues of our borders. During the “Safety, army and corruption” discussion taking place at “Article three” press club, the parliamentary candidate Stepan Safaryan, nominated by the proportional list, said that the most important part of Free Democrat’s project is about the safety of the country. “Besides economical problems we are also bringing up the problem of safety. If we bring from 800 to 1mln dollars into the light, we’ll double the expenses of defense- from salaries to military equipment”.
“We are planning to review the policy of our defense and to solve the problem of the race of weaponry. The latter is something that The Republic of Armenia hasn’t done; instead it has gotten into a race with Azerbaijan. We also plan to seriously include the people living near the border in the building of the army, to gradually transit it into a professional army and match its standards with that of NATO. We are not talking only about controlling the military threats.” Stepan Safaryan thinks that the army has to be a restraining factor, not one to carry out policy.
Parliamentary candidate Arthur Yeghiazaryan, who’s nominated by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation list, said, that the party doesn’t have a specific point for Artsakh’s issue. It’s an inseparable part of Armenian issues.
“Specifically with Azerbaijan our conflict is in pro Pan-Turkism. The efficiency and training of our army is very important to us. The strategy and the approaches of our army should be reviewed, because we can force peace if we are well prepared, and we do seek peace. We see all of this in a nation-army conceptual circle.
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We view this in the arm industry circle. We have to be self-sufficient, because if Azerbaijan has oil, then we have brains. The tactics of the army should be transferred from defensiveness to punishment-prevention. We have this now too, but it should be more stressed, so that the events that occurred in April never repeat themselves again.”
ARF thinks that the number of professional divisions should be increased. As for “Yelq”, they view these problems in the context of external security. “Corruption is also a threat for our national security, because as we have already realized in April, corruption can be turned into blood. The economical developments should back up the army. As for the main regional security, I think the military balance with Azerbaijan should be restored. The Republic of Armenia is sitting alone around the table of negotiation, we don’t have partners: we only have a country that’s negotiating with us. And the head of that country has announced numerous times that he intends to drink tea in Yerevan and Stepanakert. We think that in such kind of atmosphere, the negotiations will not lead anywhere, we have to become more powerful inside our country.”
