“You can go into what I said and you will find there a very clear thing that this strike against lies that has become abstinence in the past week is indefinite, and I will decide myself how the sanctuary will end. I have never connected the end of this sanctuary with April 9…. It is malevolence, wrong, and slander that you repeat those claims with your question now, to which you refer, as a basis for your question, that I have ever connected this sanctuary with April 9. It is indefinite, it can last beyond April 9, and it is very easy for me; now I will continue for a very long time. However, I decided, also keeping my word, with my decision, also on the occasion of Easter, to end this sanctuary,” Raffi Hovhannisyan, the Heritage Party leader, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am, when we inquired of him why he had stopped the hunger strike, not waiting until April 9, the deadline he had set for Serzh Sargsyan to disqualify himself. Let us remind that Mr. Hovhannisyan said at the March 10 rally when he went on a hunger strike: “Before the moment of love, fortitude, humanity, and wisdom, I go not on a hunger strike, but on a strike against fraud, against fear, and lies. And unless Serzh Sargsyan disqualifies himself for the future of our fatherland, our people, his grandchildren, I will stay in Freedom Square and will not eat…. Mr. Sargsyan must disqualify himself until April 9, not at my instance, but at the instance of the overwhelming majority of Armenia’s people and due to their just vote.”
Arphine SIMONYAN
