JULY 7 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – French President Francois Hollande said he would support a second attempt to pass a bill which would make it illegal to deny an alleged genocide at the end of WWI of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Pushing the bill through France’s parliament would be a major victory for Armenia. Turkey refutes genocide accusations.
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(News report from Issue No. 096, published on July 13 2012)
JUNE 6 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Coinciding with a visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the South Caucasus, fighting flared between Azerbaijani forces and Armenian- backed rebels around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Media reported that nine soldiers from both sides had been killed in shootouts over the past few days.
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(News report from Issue No. 091, published on June 8 2012)
MAY 11 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Republican Party defied the doomsayers at Armenia’s parliamentary election on May 6 by increasing its share of the vote and winning a majority of seats for the first time.
The vocal opposition bloc, lead by former president Lev Ter-Petrosyan, was soundly beaten. The numbers point to a clear Republican Party victory. It won 44 percent of the party-list vote, up from 34 percent in 2007. This was topped up by 22 wins in individually contested seats, giving it a total of 69 seats in the 131-seat parliament.
This is the first time in post-Soviet Armenia that a single party has won a majority in parliament. Opinion polls in the build up to the election had predicted a Republican Party win but with a slightly reduced proportion of the vote and certainly not with a majority.
A large victory for his party is a clear boost for President Serzh Sarksyan who will be contesting a presidential election next year, a contest certain to be heated. It is also a blow to the opposition. Predictably, although European election observers declared the vote pretty fair, the opposition said it had been fraudulent and called on their supporters to protest.
Politics in Armenia is far less about policy and far more about personalities and on this occasion, it appears voters in Armenia emphatically preferred the incumbent governing party.
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(News report from Issue No. 087, published on May 11 2012)
APRIL 27 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia said that Azerbaijani forces shot dead three of its soldiers in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan vowed revenge, triggering one of the most serious stand-offs over Nagorno- Karabakh this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 086, published on May 4 2012)
APRIL 23 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan, now a temporary member of the UN Security Council, asked the UN to close the nuclear power station in Armenia because it was unsafe, media quoted Agshin Mekhdiyev, Azerbaijan’s UN envoy, as saying. Armenia dismissed the demand as propaganda.
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(News report from Issue No. 085, published on April 27 2012)
APRIL 7 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Fierce campaigning began in Armenia for a parliamentary election scheduled for May 6. The election will be watched closely to gauge the level of support for Armenia’s vocal opposition against the Republican Party, which heads a government coalition. President Serzh Sargsyan belongs to the Republican Party.
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(News report from Issue No. 083, published on April 13 2012)
APRIL 4 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian PM, Tigran Sargsyan, suggested that Russia could move its missile defence radar station in the South Caucasus from Gabala in Azerbaijan to Armenia. His suggestion is certain to stir strained Armenia-Azerbaijan relations as Baku is re-negotiating Russia’s rent on the important Soviet-era radar.
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(News report from Issue No. 082, published on April 6 2012)
MARCH 7 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian public TV broadcaster, APTV, formally pulled out of the Eurovision Song Contest, to be hosted by arch-enemy Azerbaijan. Public broadcasters organise the national entrants for the competition and APTV’s withdrawal means Armenia will not be represented at the contest in May.
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(News report from Issue No. 080, published on March 8 2012)
FEB. 24 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – A group of 22 Armenian singers called on the country to boycott the Eurovision Song contest in Baku in May. Armenia and Azerbaijan are still officially at war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia has applied for a place at Eurovision but has not yet selected its singer.
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(News report from Issue No. 079, published on March 1 2012)
FEB. 17 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Facing a growing threat from wolves, Armenia’s government said it would pay hunters $260 for every wolf they kill. Officials want to cull 200 wolves of an estimated population of 600. Attacks on villages have risen as wolves adapt to the cold weather and deforestation.
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(News report from Issue No. 78, published on Feb. 23 2012)
