The first economic conference of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), which took place in October and was broadcast live on ArmNews TV, reminded people about the Soviet times.
For example, a media outlet compared it with a gathering of an agricultural collective farm from the Soviet times. However, the RPA conference differed from the Soviet conferences with several things. For example, it differed with LCD screens in the hall and microphones with remote control. However, the people who saw the meetings of the Soviet times too say that there is a big similarity, which is higher than any other differences. This similarity was the environment and the attitude of people to speak about positive things only.
What was the goal of that conference? Prime-minister Tigran Sargsyan gave the answer to this question in his opening speech. “By initiating and organizing its first economic conference the RPA has the goal to introduce to its members, partners and people the economic situation in the country, the responsibility for which is first of all born by the RPA as people have voted for this party,” said the PM and added that the RPA would introduce the economic policy of the coalition government during 2008-2011 and the results. However, this is not the only goal as according to the PM the conference was a unique opportunity to present the results of the government’s work in the regions, communities, initiate discussions, as a result of which the RPA would be able to collect the questions people were interested in recommendations of the society in order to consider them in pre-election platforms.
The opening speech was followed by estimations to the activities of the government during the years 2008-2011. The prime-minister said that the government had been able to resist the consequences of the world economic crisis. “The crisis that started in 2008 was unique, and the results are still outstanding both in the world and Armenia’s economy. Despite the difficulties resulted from the crisis, the government succeeded in continuing the diversification and reforms of the economy,” he aid and added that in order to overcome the negative consequences of the crisis the government had succeeded in implementing the main principles established by the main platform. “The RPA has proven that it has sufficient intellectual and human potential, political will in order to fulfill its goals, as well as correct the shortcomings, which still exist,” said Tigran Sargsyan. Following the presentations other members of the government started to praise the government’s policy, and the first one was the finance minister Vache Gabriyelyan, who said that the government’s policy to resist the world economic crisis in 2008 had been effective. He spoke about the government’s support to large companies such as mining sector and other companies, and added that the level of social protection of people had been protected in the mentioned period. He also spoke about the importance of encouraging investments in Armenia through policies such as easing tax and customs procedures, etc.
The economy minister Tigran Davtyan’s speech was more optimistic. He said that since 2008 the government had initiated implementation of projects targeted at development of production and they mainly had been focusing on exported production. The minister said that the crisis had impacted the implementation, thus they had to make changes in order to be consistent and adequate with the ongoing economic processes. However, Tigran Davtyan said that “Armenia had been and would continue to be a production-oriented country”.
There were other speakers too, but none of them criticized the government and all of them praised the incumbent authorities and their policy. A journalist asked the head of ArmNews agency what their policy was for broadcasting conferences, whether they had been paid for live broadcasting, and if no, whether they would agree to provide live broadcast in case of conferences organized by other political parties as well. In answer to this question Artak Alexanyan said that they had agreed to provide live broadcast due to the fact that it was an exceptional event. There was total harmony at the conference because all the participants were optimistic and praised the government for the economic policy.
In a word, the conference proceeded according to the first sentence of the opening ceremony: “The economic policy delegates of the Republican Party of Armenia estimate the results of the government’s economic policy in 2008-2011 positively”.
In fact the government organized this event in participation of their team members, who did not criticize the government’s policy and only praised the authorities and their economic policy. According to the PM, the RPA was given the vote of the society and was the one to bear responsibility for the economic policy, and it is logical that they are also the one to be praised for any good things done so far, and that is what they gathered there for.
As for the prospective of public discussions, hardly there may be any public discussions because even the activists of the RPA were keeping silence during the conference. As for the opinion of the society, the government representatives prefer social blogs and mainly Facebook for this purpose. By the way, there was time when the prime-minister was very active in the Internet and used to read the posts in his blog. Now it seems that the prime-minister does not have time for that anymore because he did the last post in his blog in June of this year, which was connected with the publication of the 168 hours newspaper concerning migration.