Pashinyan Explains Why All Media Were Not Invited to the Press Conference

If your stated principle is correct, then why are you here? This was noted by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in response to a question from a 'Zhoghovurd' newspaper journalist regarding why media outlets critical of the government and the Prime Minister were not present at today’s press conference.

“All media have never been present because media outlets grow every day, and we have logistical problems; you can see that there isn’t enough seating. If you don’t mind, next time I will meet with those media outlets that are not here, and I won’t invite you due to the lack of space. Or we can organize a press conference exclusively for opposition media,” Pashinyan stated. “If we only wanted to invite loyal journalists, we would do so, and your presence is vivid evidence of that.”

When asked that this is the first press conference with journalists present in two years, he responded that it was also influenced by COVID. “Now we will look into issues here, we will address questions there, and we will see what kind of questions needed to be raised in person or weren’t raised. One of the reasons for this is that at one point there was an emotional political atmosphere among the media. Content is more important to me than form, but you see we have returned to this format,” Pashinyan said.

The journalist also inquired, “'Zhoghovurd' presented 160 facts claiming that many of your presented facts have been manipulative and false, and have not become reality. Why have your principles changed, and why are you no longer open and transparent with the media?”

In response, Pashinyan said, “I am not familiar with your 160 facts, but I will definitely look into them. Regarding the 100 facts, in 2022 there were so many facts in this regard—starting from economic indicators, budget revenue, growth in salaries, growth in jobs, and large-scale reforms taking place in the armed forces, police, teacher salary increases, assistance for the birth of the third and each subsequent child, and the construction of roads, schools, kindergartens, and hospitals. I published one fact that is worth hundreds of facts—that in terms of state-ordered healthcare services, we have provided about 438 thousand more services compared to 2017. This means 400 thousand people were deprived of healthcare services. We decided that everyone can benefit from state-ordered services in cases of infertility. We have failures in the security sector, but we have successes in the rest. There’s no need for a long debate here. Regarding transparency, how else can we be more transparent?”