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President Continues to Readjust Armenian Government

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  • President Continues to Readjust Armenian Government

    World Markets Research Center
    Global Insight
    May 28, 2008



    President Continues to Readjust Armenian Government

    by Natalia Leshchenko



    Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has dismissed a key security
    official, Grigori Sarkisian, from the position of head of the State
    Protection Service. No official reason for the dismissal was given
    either by the government or Sarkisian himself, who pledged loyalty to
    the president. In another development, three members of the cabinet
    from the Dashnaktsutyun party, Agriculture Minister David Lokian,
    Labour and Social Affairs Minister Aghvan Vartanian, and Education
    Minister Levon Mkrtchian, have resigned following the party congress,
    allegedly for personal reasons, to be replaced by other members of the
    party, who have not yet been named. In the meantime, the only
    opposition party represented in the parliament, Zharangutyun of Raffi
    Hovannisian, has rejected the governmental proposal to head their
    choice of one of the three newly created parliamentary
    committees--agriculture, social affairs, and local government.

    Significance:The changes in Armenia's ruling circles reflect the
    adjustment of the political players to the transfer of power from
    former president Robert Kocharian to his ally Serzh Sargsyan in March
    this year, which involved some serious public protests. One
    explanation of the security chief's sacking attributes his dismissal
    to the harsh repression of the post-presidential election protests on
    1 March in which eight people died, although a more probable reason is
    a personal rift between Sarkisian and the new president's chief of
    security Vache Ghazarian. Political parties are in the meantime
    seeking to find their feet, with Zharangutyun apparently wishing to
    preserve its distance from the government and thus undermine the
    president's claim to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
    Europe that his government embraces the full political spectrum of
    Armenia.
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