President Kocharyan has signed a decree today, lifting 2 restrictions out of 9, under point 4 of the State of Emergency decree. Hence, the following two restrictions are no longer applicable: 1)Temporary suspension of the activities of political parties and other nongovernmental organizations obstructing the removal of the circumstances serving as a basis for the declaration of the state of emergency. 2) Expulsion of individuals who break the regime of the state of emergency and not residing in a given territory at the expense of their means, and if they don’t have means – at the expense of the means of the Republic of Armenia state budget on the condition of the further return of the expenses made.
2. Serzh Sargsyan continues to play the good guy – restating his willingness to cooperate, discuss, etc. The newly elected president has also decided to set up his own blogs and take questions from everyone. The official blog for Serzh Sargsyan created especially for this purpose runs the following announcement:
On March 13, the RA Prime Minister, newly elected president Serzh Sargsyan will be responding to the questions of the citizens. You can
send your questions via the following internet sites:
www.serzhsargsyan.am
www.panorama.am
http://serzhsargsyan.livejournal.com
Alternatively, you can ask your qeustions calling 080099999 phone number. The qesutions weill be accepted from March 11, starting from 10.00 o’clock, till March 12th, 21.00 o’clock.
Given the amount of tensions, suspicion and gossip in the society, this move is more then welcome, and due credit should be given to Serzh Sargsyan for attempting it. However, it remains to be seen, if the new president will indeed be prepared to face the really tough questions.
3. Other then the two positive steps mentioned above, govenment is doing little to help discharge the situation. Persecution of opposition activists continues, along with total media control and policy of disseminting state propaganda and lies.
I for one welcome this new chapter. Maybe we have all learned that we, collectively, need to be more vigilant, do that hard work, recognize the danger in disinformation, and prioritize what is more vs less important during an election.
I think people from all sides can benefit from this approach.
Like I’ve already said – this is a very welcome move. I’d like to render my special thanks to Mr. Ruben Muradyan (http://uzogh.livejournal.com) for his efforts to make this happen.
The fact remains that people had to die in order for this “symbolic” reaching out to the people to occur. It’s sad to think that all those who persist in calling the thousands of protestors “manipulated, frenzied crowds” might be now reaping the fruit of their personal courage and determination to take the future course of their governance into their own hands.
The people who died (except the police officer) are “esh nahatak”s for the protection of Levon. Esh Nahatak. Nothing more. Very very unfortunate. Ter Petrosyan has to pay for this.
Throughout his ccampaign and since becoming PM Serge Sargsyan has always tried to reach out, more and more. This is not new. This didn’t happen because of some criminals who caused riots.
Hayrenaser,
Sadly you are a petty conniving semi-fascist whose conception of patriotism is leading our country down the road to ruin. That you don’t see the duplicity in what Serzh is doing, to placate the thousands of ordinary citizens who protested, is pathetic and merely serves to label you as a “running dog”.
Ramik,
We don’t have to jail thousands we just have to jail 5-6 more (including fascist Levon). If they “mistajenly” shoot him dead, even better. But this issue is closed you will never EVER see what you wanted. EVER. Mark my words. And I bet you anything