YEREVAN. – The non-pro-government Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) decided to end its seventh congress on Saturday with one session.   

And the meeting of the newly elected PAP Political Board was convened following the briefing with news reporters, after the congress. 

In the meantime, however, PAP National Assembly (NA) Faction Secretary Naira Zohrabyan commented on President Serzh Sargsyan’s recent remarks concerning the “offended [political] forces,” and said:

“I see a dangerous points in the president’s speech. I see a dividing line between ‘us’ and ‘you,’ whereas the country is facing such serious problems that we need the largest possible consolidation to solve the problems.”    

Zohrabyan also reflected on Sargsyan’s address, which he delivered during the Yerkrapah Volunteers Union’s tenth congress on Saturday, and where he had presented the mandatory funded pension system under a positive light. The PAP NA Faction secretary specifically said as follows:

“Introducing such a component under these social conditions [in Armenia] is just inadmissible. The application of the mandatory component has brought and will bring social tension. A government which has a resource of trust and has not failed in its promises in the previous years may resort to such a painful reform. [But] this government did not have the moral and the professional right to resort to such a reform.”      

The new funded pension plan, which formally came into force in Armenia on January 1, 2014, is mandatory for those born in and after 1974 and voluntary for those born before 1974. In line with this plan, 5 to 10 percent of the monthly salaries in Armenia will be deducted and mandatorily be allocated to cumulative pension funds; the latter will be reimbursed as pensions once a person turns 63 years old.      

On January 24, however, the Constitutional Court decided to suspend the execution of some components in the Law on Funded Pensions pending the hearing—on March 28—of the petition submitted by the four non-ruling-coalition parliamentary forces—the Armenian National Congress, Prosperous Armenia, ARF Dashnaktsutyun, and Heritage—, and into the constitutionality of the several articles of the law.

Notwithstanding this, some employers already are deducting the mandatory pension payment from the salaries of their employees.