Armenia’s current leaders blame previous leaders whenever something goes wrong in the country. After they lost the war, they blamed it on the previous presidents. They do not take any responsibility for their own shortcomings, even though they have been in power now for three years. While the previous rulers can be blamed for many wrongdoings, the current leaders have their own share of shortcomings.
Here is the perfect example of how the current leaders completely mishandled a critical national security project that they are fully to blame. There are many more such examples.
An Armenian businessman by the name of Artak Tovmasyan had the proper connections and the brilliant idea of building state-of-the-art armored military vehicles in Armenia and donating a portion of them to the Armenian government. One would think that Armenian officials would have welcomed such a valuable proposal and would have done everything possible to facilitate this important investment opportunity which has critical national security implications. This is the incredible story of incompetent and uncaring high-ranking Armenian government officials failing to capitalize on this unique offer.
Shortly after Nikol Pashinyan came to power as Prime Minister of Armenia in 2018, Mr. Tovmasyan met with him and proposed to invest in Armenia millions of dollars along with the Canadian Streit Group, a well-known manufacturer of armored military vehicles with 30 years of experience and factories in five countries, including Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, India and Pakistan. The sixth such facility would have been in Armenia. The total amount of the investment may have reached $20 million which would have included other military-related investors. The project would have also created hundreds of jobs.
Prime Minister Pashinyan expressed interest in the project in 2018 and told his aides to follow up. Regrettably, due to the incompetence and carelessness of Pashinyan’s cadre of officials, three years later, no progress has been made on this vital project, despite Mr. Tovmasyan’s several follow up meetings with the Prime Minister. These armored military vehicles would have been very useful during last year’s war with Azerbaijan, saving the lives of countless Armenian soldiers. Unfortunately, Armenian officials have remained unresponsive to this project, both before, during, and after the war.
Mr. Tovmasyan’s proposal consisted of offering to build gradually around 1,300 armored military vehicles over the next 10 years and donating 130 of them to the Armenian armed forces at no charge. With each vehicle worth $450,000 or more, the total value of the donated vehicles would have been over $60 million.
