{"id":149525,"date":"2011-12-19T14:38:04","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T10:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=149525"},"modified":"2011-12-19T15:03:16","modified_gmt":"2011-12-19T11:03:16","slug":"why-wealthy-armenian-revolutionary-federation-mps-are-not-oligarchs-hovhannisyan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/12\/19\/why-wealthy-armenian-revolutionary-federation-mps-are-not-oligarchs-hovhannisyan.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Wealthy Armenian Revolutionary Federation MPs are Not Oligarchs: Hovhannisyan"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are MPs in the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnkatsutyun, or ARF-D) parliamentary faction who are wealthy but they’re not oligarchs, said ARF-D faction leader Vahan Hovhannisyan in an interview<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span> with Russian news agency Regnum on Monday. According to the latter, this refers specifically to Ashot Apoyan.<\/p>\n

“Yes, he is a wealthy man. But an oligarch \u2014 in the Armenian sense of the word \u2014 is someone who flaunts his wealth and power, is always surrounded by bodyguards, travels by armored vehicle and only with an escort, behaving arrogantly in public places while his thick-headed escorts shoot in the air or in the direction of the public. None of the wealthiest members in our faction, including Ashot Apoyan, have been seen exhibiting such behavior \u2014 [Apoyan] behaves extremely well, is deeply religious, and a quiet family man. In other words, he does not fit into the framework of the concept of an ‘Armenian oligarch.’ He doesn’t apply to this class. He’s just a seriously successful person,” he said.<\/p>\n

On the question of the absence of ARF-D MPs in parliamentary meetings, Hovhannisyan said there are members of their faction who are often absent due to real health problems; for example, in the case of Alvard Petrosyan.<\/p>\n

“But I think that parliamentary work is not solely ensuring presence at meetings in the hall \u2014 or even the speeches. In the hall you can see a lot of deputies from other factions who are physically present but do nothing. As for MP Ashot Aopyan, his work outside of parliament is valuable: for example, he provides us with qualified experts and works with them to develop bills and proposals \u2014 somewhere in a quiet room. He’s just not a public person but he he brings many benefits. There are such MPs in all parliaments. Unfortunately, in Armenia, there are a lot of people who rarely go to meetings, which is why it becomes more obvious. But for some reason no one asks why, for example, [tycoon, Prosperous Armenia party leader] Gagik Tsarukyan is not in the hall \u2014 especially because he is head of the Prosperous Armenia faction. I’m not saying this to criticize, because this man resolves dozens of foreign policy issues \u2014 Ukraine, Belarus, Croatia. Apparently, you need to change the system of assessing participation in meetings,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are MPs in the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnkatsutyun, or ARF-D) parliamentary faction who are wealthy but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[65942,16268,36027,20253,16270],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}