GOOD GOD! THE SAME OLD FACES!

The formation of the Armenian government has been completed. At first glance very real changes have been made to the Armenian cabinet of ministers. There are new appointments in the Ministry of the Economy, where the new minister is Karen Chshmarityan, who was Armenian Minister of Trade and Industry from 1999 to 2002, and Minister of Trade and Economic Development from 2002 to 2007. The portfolio of Finance Minister has gone to Gagik Khachatryan, the former head of the State Revenue Committee, which includes the customs and tax committees. Ervand Zakharyan, who has been chairman of the Real Estate Cadastre Committee since 2009, has been appointed Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. The Justice Minister is Hovhannes Manukyan, former Armenian ambassador to Georgia. Leading urologist Armen Muradyan heads the Health Ministry. Aramayis Grigoryan, who was previously governor of Armenia's Ararat Region, has become Minister for Nature Protection. But will all these changes give hope of better things for the ordinary people of Armenia?

As usual, Armenian observers are in no hurry to assess the future economic course of the new government, especially as neither the new Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan nor the members of his cabinet are rushing to show their hand. Moreover, the Director of the Caucasus Institute, Alexander Iskandaryan, in an interview for Radio Liberty, although he tried to be as positive and optimistic as possible, nevertheless had to admit that the situation in Armenia would not depend very much on the actions of its own government. It would survive, despite everything. "The government could, of course, do some terrible things, make some awful mistakes and the consequences would be negative. However, unless the government is crazy, I don't think it will make any silly mistakes. And in this sense the economy will depend more on external factors: investments, the international crisis, long-term cheap loans, and so on," he said. In point of fact, Iskandaryan was admitting that the degree of Armenia's external dependence today is such that the possibility of its own government influencing the situation is not great. Not to mention the fact that, to be honest, there are no signs of any bright economists and financial experts in the new cabinet. Its members are well known for rather different qualities. Manvel Sargsyan, director of the Armenian Centre of National and International Studies, was rather more brutal on this subject: "It's very sad that we are seeing people whom the press has already described as corrupt. This is a government of the worst corrupt officials. Because, basically, they are all people we are familiar with who have worked in previous governments and have a pretty bad reputation." And such an assessment can hardly be described as too radical.

Back in 2010 people in Armenia were saying that Hovik Abrahamyan (who was parliamentary speaker at the time and today heads its government, also known by the name "Muk" - "Mouse") owns a decent share of Armenia's gambling houses and three sand pits and even a holiday home in Crimea.  He acquired notoriety not only for the scandalous privatization of the Ararat cement and Artashat canning plants -in the first case the majority stake was held by Robert Kocharyan and Gagik Tsarukyan, and in the second Abrahamyan himself. He was believed to have been the driving force behind the rigging of the 2003 presidential elections, in which Robert Kocharyan was re-elected for a second term. Moreover, many people in Yerevan claim it was "Muk" who proposed using the bodyguards of oligarchs and criminal organizations to put down opposition protest demonstrations.

For his part, Ervand Zakharyan, who was handed the more than lucrative post of Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, back in the 1990s worked in the sphere of fuel supplies to Armenia…was involved in the so-called "fuel oil affair", when a major consignment of fuel oil that had arrived from Russia was casually plundered. After riding out the storm in Moscow, he returned to Yerevan following the appointment of Robert Kocharyan as Armenia's prime minister in 1997, became deputy director of "ArmRosgazprom", and later Minister of Transport and Communications. In 2003, when he became mayor of Yerevan, Zakharyan raised the amount of the bribes several times. Trading in land plots, illegal building and violation of building standards and regulations became common practice, and all this, of course, for good money. And he was also active in attracting the criminal fraternity to cooperate with him.  

Gagik Khachatryan, who has been handed the portfolio of Finance Minister in the new government, has been described as Armenia's most corrupt official.

Finally, the former Mayor of Yerevan, Gagik Beglaryan, better known as "Black Gago", has also never been out of the government. The story of a concert in Yerevan by the world renowned tenor Placido Domingo was widely covered in the press at the time. Beglaryan himself was invited but instead he sent his wife and a girl friend of hers. The women wanted to sit next to President Serzh Sargsyan, but the head of his protocol service, Aram Kandayan, intervened: the Catholicos of all the Armenians, the speaker or the prime minister should be seated next to the president, not the mayor's wife. The women complained to the mayor. "Black Gago" decided that his wife had been shown disrespect and, the opposition media claimed, he sent Kandayan and his security guards to his own "Metaks" plant where Kandayan was beaten up. Sargsyan was furious and he told him straight: either apologize or quit. Beglaryan preferred to resign. But he very soon became minister of transport and communications. 

The new composition of the cabinet suggests a number of things. It could be argued that many members of the Armenian government have at one time or another been part of Robert Kocharyan's "inner circle" - to be fair, it should be noted that Serzh Sargsyan, too, was a member of this "circle". But today, when Kocharyan is clearly laying claims to power, such a government line-up looks like a compromise. And generally speaking, when forming his cabinet, Serzh Sargsyan was thinking more about achieving a compromise between the various financial-political - or rather criminal-political - groups than about the economy. But at the same time, the main outcome, or to be more precise the abortive outcome of the "re-formatting" of the government is that the ministers may have been replaced but the criminal component of political life in Armenia has not disappeared. And in this respect it is fitting to cry that "the mafia is immortal" in Armenia.