The Debate between Papoyan and Ioannisyan: ‘Dogs Bark, the Caravan Moves On’

“Dogs bark, the caravan moves on.” This is the statement made by ruling party MP Gevorg Papoyan, apparently in response to a post by the coordinator of the initiative for informed citizens, Daniel Ioannisyan.

Ioannisyan had written: “Meet Gevorg Harutyuni Papoyan. He is the Chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee of the National Assembly. On H1 TV, he divides 3 billion 130 million dollars by 2 and gets 1 billion 250 million. In the same broadcast, the candidate of economic sciences Papoyan declares that in order to mitigate the appreciation of the dram against the dollar, the Central Bank should spend dollars (yes, I am not mixing anything up, that’s exactly what he said).”

Recently, Gevorg Papoyan announced that according to the results of the re-count of the ruling party’s election results, the votes of the members of the board differ by 2-3 votes, when in reality that number reached 30. Papoyan even stated that according to him, Arsen Torosyan's votes did not change at all, whereas they actually changed by a direct 20 votes.

But Papoyan stands out not only for his phenomenal knowledge of numbers and his exceptional attitude toward lying. A newly appointed member of the ruling party's board, Papoyan was a member of the Republican Party from 2005 to 2018. However, this does not prevent him from claiming that journalists who have worked in free media for many years are “not accustomed” to democratic traditions.

The defender of democracy, Gevorg Papoyan, changed his perceptions about democracy sharply on April 23, 2018—the day of Serzh Sargsyan's resignation. Supporting consistency, Gevorg Papoyan immediately left the Republican Party after the revolution, began to grow a beard, deleted everything he had written before April 25, 2018, from his Facebook page, and then joined the ruling party.

This debate, however, has a backstory. Yesterday, the FIP platform published an article titled “Groundless Accusations, Manipulation, Former Members: Papoyan's New Claims,” which stated that during a broadcast on Public Television, National Assembly member Gevorg Papoyan made several claims regarding the current developments in the economy that were manipulative or unfounded.

Papoyan responded to that article, writing: “Since the platform for fact-checking is known for its poor ability to verify facts, they do sometimes write correct things... I am ready to give a free lecture on this topic for FIP journalists, so that they do not write incorrect things and do not find themselves in an awkward situation.”

This statement by Papoyan was responded to by FIP platform editor Hakob Karapetyan, who noted that Papoyan has manipulated his words. According to Karapetyan, the MP has closed the opportunity for him to leave a comment and wrote: “Let’s conclude the FIP topic with this self-confession of the Chief Editor of FIP. I hope next time the ‘facts’ are ‘verified’ more carefully.”