Tigran Avinyan’s Message on March 1
Thirteen years ago, our state and society were severely shocked when the protest of our compatriots challenging the official election results was met with point-blank fire. From that day on, our reality entered a period of tension, when due to narrow clan and personal interests, a group of people decided that power in the country belonged to them and took it away from the people without discriminating between the methods. In this way, the state was alienated from the people, citizens learned from their own experience that their absolute and inviolable right to life was not at all protected by the state, but was directly encroached upon.
The nationwide willingness to correct this injustice and return power to its true owner – the people – was at the heart of the Velvet Revolution of 2018, when the Armenian society rejected dictatorship, did away with the alienation of the state and the coercion to one-man rule.
Society decided through the revolution that there would no longer be a “March 1” in Armenia, no longer would unarmed and peaceful protesters be shot dead in their own capital city and most importantly, that power could not belong to a group of people; it could not be handed down through backroom deals, based on secret and narrow-clan interests.
Today, taking advantage of the emotional state of our society, attempts are being made to undermine Armenia’s democracy, bypass the constitutional and legal procedures of people’s power and resolve political issues by neglecting the nation’s free will. Such attempts are doomed to failure because the memory of the events of March 1, 2008, and the guarantees provided by the revolution of 2018 will ensure that government in Armenia is formed exclusively based on the free expression of the will of society – in a constitutional way, through free, fair and transparent elections.
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The Government of the Republic of Armenia