– Your visits to different regions with Ministers and RPA faction deputies, meetings with RA regional structures and people, make an impression of pre-electoral campaign. Aren’t they pre-electoral PR actions prior to officially defined terms?
– RPA is a governing political party and is obliged to discuss with its allies the results of the previous five years and the priorities that should be included in the pre-electoral platform. According to the democratic rules the party should take into account suggestions, recommendations of its members, since it gives the opportunity to find out the party’s strengths and weaknesses. These meetings were not simply devoted to discussions of party issues. In marzes public figures, representatives from other political parties took part in the discussions as well, who wanted to make their suggestions to our working group. It gives an opportunity to better understand the priorities, the issues of interest for our party members and ordinary citizens.
– What are these issues?
– People highlight the importance of peacekeeping and security issues. The second place occupies the employment issue, which is considered as priority in all marzes. The third essential issue is agriculture. Approximately 340.000 households are engaged in agriculture, that’s why this issue is constantly in the center of our attention. Nest come social, healthcare and education issues. Besides the above-mentioned ones there are 18 more spheres that the people are concerned about.
– Have you noticed any sphere that does not have that many problems? I mean the authorities managed to make a change and resolve certain issues.
– I mentioned the spheres that are always in the center of attention-infrastructures, road construction, school building. There are a number of issues that have not been addressed yet. We ask our party members to express their opinion about 22-24 questions via distributed questionnaires. This is done to make sure that our party platform is complete.
– You discuss pre-electoral issues with regional governors, mayors and heads of PRA regional structures during these visits. These issues are related with RPA pre-electoral headquarters, the head of which is Hovik Abrahamyan. Won’t these visits cause contradiction among the party leaders?
– No, all these issues are discussed at the party congresses, and no contradiction arises.
– Rumors say you will be the second on the RPA proportional party list. This list is probably being discussed with Serzh Sargsyan and Supreme Body. What changes are expected?
– The Supreme Body hasn’t discussed the party list yet. We should wait until it is discussed.
– There are many pretenders for Prime-Minister’s office in RPA. In case RPA is the majority in the upcoming elections, will you continue to be the Prime-Minister?
– At this stage we should concentrate our power to hold free and transparent elections. At the same time we should present our plans and platform to the people to have their confidence for the following 5 years.
– Why should people vote for the RPA, when the party didn’t realize the main provision of its platform- double increase of salaries, pensions, GDP and other promises. Five years ago it was promised to the residents of marzes to improve their living standard; however the result was the increase of poverty. RA authorities take credits to pay budget expenses.
– Not only within the RPA but the government projects imply lots of provisions and goals. Our voters, society, analytical centers indeed carefully follow these projects and provisions. They reveal the strengths and weaknesses. We are unique because we have always been honest to our party teammates and voters in general. We always spoke about the mistakes and omissions if there were any. And it is quite clear that the challenges of the past 5 years had their impact on the quality of implementation of our goals.
– At the end of the last year we declared that the income line of 2012 compared to 2011 will be increased by 101 billion AMD. In 2011 the budget income was 877 billion AMD and we have set 938 billion for 2012. It means that the budget increased by 61 billion AMD, 50 out of which was provided at the expense of the inflation of 4-5,5% planned for the year.
– The indexes that we are speaking about, is reflected in an accurate manner and was adopted by the NA. So you can easily be introduced to the indexes of the budget adopted by the NA because they clearly portray the income line and the collected profits.
– You have stated that the upcoming parliamentary elections are going to be the most transparent and free elections of independent Armenia. After the elections of Hrazdan mayor the opposition stated that the PRA has figured out more progressive and noiseless methods of election fraud and so won the race as a result of numerous violations. Is the same model going to be applied during the parliamentary elections?
– First, let me speak about the elections in Hrazdan. The current mayor has won as a result of an intensive campaign and race. Even the observers representing the diplomatic sector have brought up this version. I’d like to emphasize that we are moving forward stage by stage. In Armenia a civil society is being formed and even the opposition highlights this. Do you remember that the ANC has reiterated this in its statement? And the guarantee of the civil society is that the elections should be free and transparent because our society will not endure fraudulent elections anymore. All the political parties realize this and most importantly so does the ruling party. Once again, I’d like to assure you that the upcoming elections will be the most transparent, free and fair in the independent history of Armenia.
– In the NA the RPA has over 50% representation and during the February 12 elections the RPA won about 90% of the local government seats. Could one party get so many votes as a result of a free and fair race? And does this index really reflect the moods of the society?
– During the political race every party is trying to strengthen its positions and the RPA follows the same principle too. I don’t see anything strange in the fact that the RPA has gained the majority of the local government seats. It reflects both the political reality as well as the expectations of our society.
– Among other reasons the supporters of the 100% proportional system bring up the fact that in 2007 the voters gave the RPA only 34 percent of the votes but as a result it gained 50 percent in the parliament. The RPA attained the rest at the expense of the majoritarian seats.
– This evaluation may be given by political parties, which think that they’d benefit from the opposite. It is not right to substantiate the election mood with the current arguments. The ongoing political situation may change but the election system should be able to provide and guarantee normal elections without any deviations or ups and downs. There are always counterarguments but we need stable mechanisms of elections at this phase.
– The ones, who are against the majoritarian system, claim that the nominees are mostly oligarchs and thus guarantee their victory at the expense of bribery and election fraud.
– That is the reason why we adopt many laws, which forbid the businessmen and statesmen abuse their official posts. And as a result of strengthening this mechanism and tools the businessman will realize that he/she doesn’t benefit from being elected MP because in that case they will gain extra duties and responsibilities – thus the level of their accountability will be increased. We have always come up and will continue to come up with such legislative initiatives. So we believe that over time the belief that the MPs mandate or the holding of the state post will help solve many personal issues, will soon be vanished.
– Last year President Serzh Sargsyan stated that the business sector should be segregated from the state management structure. A few days ago during your meeting with the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Haffern you stated that the RPA won’t have any businessmen on its list. But today it is already evident that the RPA list will include several businessmen. For example, Ara Babloyan, Hermineh Naghdalyan, etc.
– Let’s wait for the final lists and then we’ll give you our evaluation on it. Our list will include people, who are in politics and will deal with it. Our list won’t include people, who are managing businesses. Because if we go too deep we will have to ask ourselves whether there are any MPs or government officials in Armenia that don’t own businesses. You probably know that I have personally encouraged all the interested people to participate in the bid of HES’s of NKR. I have personally bought stocks and am one of the co-owners of these HES’s. Now the question is whether I am a businessman or a politician. The committee of ethics will give answer to all these questions.
– Form time to time the tension between the RPA and PA becomes more acute. In the meantime the PA is trying to strengthen its positions through Vardan Oskanyan and other politicians. As a result, the PA becomes the main opponent of the RPA. Are you not concerned about that?
– It is very natural because if all the coalition parties are going to race to gain the ballots of voters this is a normal way to do so. We should only ensure that the competition is free and fair. And we should cooperate with our coalition partners for the sake of free and fair race. No one can deny that this competition is exists and it may even become tenser. There are no elections without tension.
– The director of the World Bank Armenia Jean-Michel Happi stated that the volume of our foreign debt had drastically increased and was then in an instable state. And Armenia continues accepting loans. Is the government not worried about that? There are also comments that the WB benefits from crediting different countries in order to keep their economies unstable.
– I don’t agree with those views. The comments of the WB director in regard to our debt were very correct and very specialized. And the context was very logical too. If we increase our foreign debt for the coming 5 years then we should clearly have the mechanisms of its strategy to provide stability. In this regard, we have developed a joint strategy with the IMF, which was adopted by the government and was approved by many prominent international organizations. We are able to manage our foreign debt and provide macroeconomic stability.
– Will we continue taking debts?
– It is not the right strategy to refuse the foreign debt. We just need to ensure that the foreign debt is manageable. If we are able to develop our infrastructures, roads, irrigation and drinkable water projects, all that creates favorable conditions for our citizens and stimulates the economic growth. It means that the foreign debt is justified. The next segment of the foreign debt is given to private companies, which means it won’t be acquitted at the expense of the state budget but the private sector is due to pay it. The foreign debt includes approximately 800 million USD for that purpose. These are extremely manageable and effective loans, which conduce to the economic growth.