Armenia's leaders is no longer able to maneuver in the foreign policy arena, Aram Karapetyan, Leader of New Times Party, told ArmInfo.
"The world is facing a serious confrontation of the leading power centers and Armenia will have to take its side in that maelstrom. Unfortunately, the authorities in the person of Serzh Sargsyan imperfectly realize all that. At least, look at the endless statements on the 'both:and' policy. To put it mildly, it is a political shortsightedness. It is anachronism. It is high time to shift gears," Karapetysn said.
According to him, the authorities have not done their final choice, though Yerevan has already announced an intention to access the Eurasian Economic Union. "Turkey and Azerbaijan with their active efforts to torpedo Armenia's accession to the EAEU just compound matters. We need to take steps against that," the politician said. Neither the opposition is able to offer any new mechanisms to meet those challenges, he said. According to Karapetyan, the parliamentary opposition's 12-point initiative contains nothing political or noticeable either.
"We need the steps offered by the opposition, but they are less important than the external challenges we are facing now," Karapetyan said.
The four opposition parliamentary forces (Heritage, Armenian National Congress, ARFD and Prosperous Armenia) made public their 12 proposals for improving the situation in Armenia on 10 June.
The first step is to cancel compulsory accumulative pension. The other proposals are to remove all paid parking lots and to cut traffic fines to less than 10% of the minimum wage; to cancel the VAT on the border and to halve the turnover tax; to redouble agricultural produce and to convert agricultural loans from foreign exchange into dram; to restart the Nairit chemical plant and to repay the debts to its employees; not to sell Vorotan Water Power Plant; not to raise public transport fares; to adopt laws curbing economic monopolies; to transit to 100% proportional parliamentary elections; and to give supervisory powers to the opposition. The final point urges the government not to sign any document contradicting Nagorno-Karabakh's interests.