“Raffi stayed at his home for 20 years. Raffi stayed at a foreigner’s home. Let him come, we will sit, and I will explain to him the opposite. One cannot struggle against this regime with seminars, you know,” Garnik Margaryan, the leader of the Motherland and Dignity Party who had decided not to participate in the election and not to endorse anyone, said in response to the statement of Raffi Hovhannisyan, the leader of the Heritage Party, “Who stays at home contributes to this government’s reproduction willingly or unwillingly.” Raffi Hovhannisyan couldn’t believe during a conversation with www.aravot.am today that Garnik Margaryan could have said something like that about him. “If anyone’s methodology and way of life includes insulting, bashing, and boasting, it is his right, but let them not appropriate it to me. I haven’t blamed anyone. I call on our compatriots not to submit to fatalism, appeals for not doing anything and their natural disappointment. That’s all I have done. There may be people who don’t agree with me, but for me, the words of the respectful colonel…. If I was born in the US, that wasn’t my choice. It was a result of our nation’s tragic history. My grandfathers survived the Genocide, they, Gaspar joined Andranik’s first volunteer regiment, and Hovakim joined Keri’s (uncle) 4th volunteer regiment. I was raised in their home and then returned to Armenia. And if Mr. Colonel really said that I had been raised in a foreigner’s home for 20 years, I will not demand explanation of him, nor will I talk about his very respectful parents’ grandfathers, but I will say that Gaspar, Hovakim, and their home was much more Armenian, was much more connected with Armenia and sacred, than that of those who, although born in Armenia, speak with a plum in their mouth.”
And since Mr. Hovhannisyan really didn’t believe that the colonel had said something like that, he asked a series of questions what he had meant, how he had said, how he had formulated his idea, we have decided to upload the recording of that part of the conversation with Mr. Margaryan.
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
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The photo of Raffi Hovhannisyan’s Armenian family by Ara Oshakan. Taken from www.mediamax.am
