‘People Remain Incarcerated for Political Reasons’: Oskanian

In the areas of the economy, domestic policies, and foreign policy, the situation is difficult and uncertain, said Armenia’s former foreign affairs minister and president of the Civilitas Foundation board Vartan Oskanian in an interview published on the Civilitas website.

“The economy is the most palpably felt because it affects us all daily, whether secure or insecure, we all see it. And the statistics support what we sense. Poverty is up, unemployment is up, the national debt has tripled. The budget deficit has tripled. The standard of living has gone down. The 15 percent drop in GDP of 2009 was a great blow to the economy and one from which we don’t seem to know how to recover. In the best case scenario, if we double the 2.4 percent growth we saw in 2010, and we double it this year, then double it again next year, by the presidential elections of 2013, real GDP will be lower than it was in 2008. This would be a serious cause for concern, even if there were a plan for how to improve on this. But there isn’t a plan,” he said.

Oskanian notes, it’s the same with domestic politics.

“Freedoms are even more curtailed. Public assembly is hampered. I know that first-hand sitting here in the Civilitas office. Every kind of loud, musical event is given permission to take over the space around the opera, just so there are no public meetings held there. Television is controlled. People remain incarcerated for political reasons,” he said.

Recall, Oskanian was assigned the post of foreign affairs minister by then-president Robert Kocharian in 1998. He held this position for ten years, till 2008, when Serzh Sargsyan took on the presidential position. He founded the Civilitas Foundation in 2008.