By Vestnik Kavkaza
The newspaper “Voice of Armenia” published the article headlined “Used to be opposition, now left the coalition.” It says that the Armenian National Congress and Dashnaktsutyun have decided to participate separately in the elections to the Yerevan Council of Elders. At the same time, they conducted behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) headed by oligarch Gagik Tsarukyan. Tsarukyan’s party wasn’t against cooperation between the parties around itself, but in fact it doesn’t want to share victory, because Tsarukyan has no doubts that PAP will win the elections on May 5th. The newspaper states that the forces are so deep in talks with PAP that they have stopped calling themselves the opposition. Today, Dashnaktsutyn and the ANC call themselves “counter-coalition” and “counter-governmental forces.”
The newspaper “Iravunk” reported that the main goal of the alliance is the need to regain the electorate that was abandoned during the presidential elections and take away as many voters as possible from the bloc “Barev, Yerevan!”, which mainly includes representatives of the Heritage party of Raffi Ovannisyan.
The same newspaper believes that Prosperous Armenia and Heritage have a lot in common. Both are trying to win the hearts of the protest electorate, rather than focus on the capital’s problems.
As for a favorite in the election campaign, it is the ruling Republican Party, with a rating reaching 69%. The rest of the struggle is for second place.
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The Azerbaijani newspaper “Khalg Gazeti” published an article on arrangements of residential areas for forced displaced people from the districts occupied by Armenia. The article says that this year it is planned to build 8 villages and residential districts for 4 thousand families. The newspaper tells about the commission of one such district in the Apsheron region in early April. 760 families got houses there; moreover, a school, a kindergarten, a club, a medical center and other social facilities have been built. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev was present at the ceremony. He said that Azerbaijan is the country with the biggest number of refugees per person in the world, and the government allocates more and more resources every year for providing comfortable living conditions for them.
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The newspaper “The Republic of Abkhazia” published an answer from President Alexander Ankvab to some demands of the resolution of a meeting organized in Sukhumi by opposition parties on March 11. The article points out that some of the demands were addressed to the legislative branch of power, others were commented on by president of the republic.
One of the demands was reorganization of the Abkhazian State Television and Radio Company into a public television corporation. The head of the republic stated that the effectiveness of public television as a means of independent presentation of the country’s socio-political life protected from governmental influence is doubtful. The president shares the view on gradual work on establishing such a television station.
Touching on using financial support from Russia in the real economic sector of Abkhazia, Ankvab called the support an instrument for achieving goals which are important for society and the state. He said that the project of the Investment Program for 2013-2015 requires financing the agricultural complex 2 billion rubles, the industrial sector - 1.5 billion rubles, the energy complex – 1 billion rubles. Moreover, resources will be allocated for development of infrastructure and roads.
As for the demographic problems mentioned in the resolution, the president noted that after the war of 1992-1993, which seriously influenced the demographic situation, a positive tendency could be seen in the republic – 32,987 people were born, while 25,504 people died. However, the government undertakes efforts to encourage demographic growth. The president believes that the foundation for this is improving the health of citizens. Hospitals are planned to be renewed. Other directions on improving the demographic situation are reduction of traffic accidents and support of returnees.
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A new subject for a dispute between Mikhail Saakashvili and Bidzina Ivanishvili in Georgia is cultural heritage – the Rabat Fortress in Akhaltsikhe, The Georgian Times reports. The periodical states that, after the end of restoration of the architectural monument last August, Ivanishvili’s team began to speak about drawbacks in the execution of the work. The Georgian Times reports that Saakashvili stated that the Rabat Fortress was completely restored and had regained its original appearance. This question led to disputes. The current first deputy of the minister of culture, Marina Mizandari, stated that restoration works in Rabat were conducted with violation of standards of cultural heritage preservation; as a result the mosque got new grates from poor material instead of old grates, while the dome become golden instead of leaden. The press-secretary of the president said in her turn that Saakashvili has no intention of changing anything in the Rabat Fortress.
