YEREVAN. – National Assembly Speaker Hovik Abrahamyan is appointed Prime Minister so as to “tie” Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) leader Gagik Tsarukyan’s “hands and feet.”

Opposition Heritage Party Board Vice-Chairman Armen Martirosyan stated the aforementioned at a press conference on Monday.

“In a certain sense [, however,] it is good that it is Hovik Abrahamyan. Personally, I feared that it could have been someone [who is] not from Armenia. The system is complemented with Hovik Abrahamyan’s appointment,” he said

In Martirosyan’s words, however, now no one should any longer expect positive changes in Armenia.

“If [ex-PM] Tigran Sargsyan was at least publicly speaking about reforms, such a thing should not be expected from Abrahamyan,” he added.

Commenting on Abrahamyan’s appointment, Boris Navasardyan, Yerevan Press Club President and Eastern Partnership Civil Society Assembly Coordinator for Armenia, for his part first recalled President Serzh Sargsyan’s statement that Armenia’s next PM “will be someone who will be to everyone’s liking.”

“If by saying ‘everyone’ he meant the opposition, Hovik Abrahamyan was not to the opposition’s liking. If the [Armenian] body politic and the European Union enter into [this] ‘everyone,’ they likewise do not enter into [this] ‘everyone.’

“[But] Russia fits in the ‘everyone’ because Russia has such leverage on us that the person is unimportant; whoever he was to be, it was to be at Russia’s desire.

“The ‘everyone’ [also] comprises the alternative [political] force [in Armenia] in which enters not solely the PAP, but the forces that voice the government’s resignation, or even demand a complete change in power.

“The ‘everyone’ [also] comprises the [country’s] oligarchic system, which doesn’t like jolts and wants to keep the decision-making in its hands,” Navasardyan specifically noted.

President Serzh Sargsyan on Sunday appointed National Assembly Speaker Hovik Abrahamyan as Prime Minister of Armenia.

Photo by Arsen Sargsyan/NEWS.am