Armenians predict Pashinyan’s strategy to be complete failure
By Abdul Kerimkhanov
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, to this day, remains in a state of “revolutionary” euphoria and is the only one who believes in his own dreams. Unfortunately he does not understand that declaring motto won't make its people rich.
Meanwhile, the political and economic situation in Armenia is becoming increasingly uncontrollable. Under these conditions, only a short-sighted leader can afford to remain a dreamer and Pashinyan does.
On August 5, Pashinyan tried to make the participants of the so-called “pan-Armenian” rally in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh believe that the new Armenian government has a long-term development strategy for the country. However, going out in front of a crowd of thousands, Pashinyan began to openly lie and share his fantasies.
Armenian experts admitted that the so-called development strategy of Armenia by 2050 was the most shameful part of his speech.
Demographer Ruben Ehanyan considers demography is not a sphere in which such revolutionary changes are possible in 30 years.
Commenting on the “power fantasies” of the Armenian PM, military expert Leonid Nersisyan noted that having one of the strongest armies in the world requires a military budget which is 20-30 times higher than today's defense spending of Armenia, that now amounts to only $609 million. But nothing of the kind is yet to be expected, he added.
As for Pashinyan's promises of 15 million tourists for Armenia by 2050, most local analysts note such an indicator for the country with two-million population is a threat to national security.
Analyst Armen Badalyan believes there can be no talk of any concept of a national dream, since it is difficult for Armenian citizens to live and they do not need fairy-tale illusions. People want to live well here and now. Armenian society needs not a "bright future," but a "bright present," he added.
The most painful for the Armenian society are the fantasies of Pashinyan on unemployment, the incredible growth of GDP and other areas of interest to citizens.
Recently, Armenian Statistical Office published figures regarding the situation with economic growth, which amounted to about five percent. However, economists see no reason for triumph here. Former Armenian PM Hrant Bagratyan said that the so-called economic growth was achieved due to gambling and car trade. Bagratyan assesses these achievements to be toxic.
In addition, while Pashinyan promises the Armenians to eradicate poverty and unemployment, today unemployment in Armenia covers 20 percent, according to official data, and 70 percent, according to unofficial ones.
A quarter of the Armenian population is in a state of poverty. For this reason, the Asian Development Bank compares Armenia with number of underdeveloped countries.
This situation is aggravated by a large, almost approaching a critical point, increase in the country's external debt. Although Pashinyan delighted the Armenians, saying that the external debt of this country had stopped growing, the expert community did not rejoice at all. The cessation of the growth of external debt in Armenian realities only means that no one gives loans to this country due to its instability and insolvency.
Amid a decline in public debt, the level of foreign investment fell sharply. If in January to March 2018, this indicator amounted to 40.76 billion drams ($85.4 million), then for the same period of this year it declined to 3.7 billion drams ($7.7 million).
The only thing that can help to realize Pashinyan’s dream is a speedy settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, precisely this case was not in Pashinyan’s fantastic program. On the contrary, he exacerbated the problem by stating that “Nagorno-Karabakh is Armenia,” and thereby made the realization of his mythical program completely impossible.
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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94
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