“The problem is so deep in Armenia that it has nothing to do with whether or not to take a mandate,” says Samvel Abrahamyan
“The problem is so deep in Armenia that it is not connected with the issue of taking a mandate at all,” ANC Executive Secretary Samvel Abrahamyan said in response to Aravot Daily’s question about how following the disgraceful situation in the RA National Assembly in recent days, would it have been right for the opposition to reject their mandates? According to him, there is a deep crisis in the political and state system in Armenia. He said that when they participated in the special parliamentary elections, they said that if these two or three forces form a government in Armenia, then that deep state crisis will not end, but will deepen, because none of those forces actually came to power to solve problems.
He explained, “Their goals are completely different. This crisis could have been resolved through elections, but, unfortunately, it was not resolved. We were explaining how to resolve it. And now whether to accept that mandate or not is a small issue in this common problem. It would not change anything. They took the mandates, we are in a crisis, if they did not take the mandates, we are still in a crisis. The task was to organize normal elections and to establish a politically sound state system in Armenia. They held disgraceful elections by passing each other around, electoral fraud, money, huge influence of money, etc. This should be the result. Now, it does not matter whether those falsifiers accepted their mandates or not, or if the government would have changed after that or not. Accepting or not accepting mandates has nothing to do with that. The problem was from the start, not from whether to accept a mandate or not.”
Aravot Daily spoke about Nikol Pashinyan’s statement on August 24 in the National Assembly, where he particularly said that the problems date back to 1998. “It is true that they do not talk about history with ‘ifs,’ but I must dare to assume that the history of the Third Republic might have developed in a different scenario if in 1998, there was an opportunity to hold extraordinary elections in the scenario of 2021. In 1998, when the incumbent resigned, it was a defeat for his political discourse and, in effect, a departure from domestic politics.” Samvel Abrahamyan responded, “I have not heard that speech. I do not want to make judgments about it. He said so much about 1998, they all said so much, but that’s another topic. This is the second tragedy that people did not understand until 1998. Blaming your own failures on events that took place years ago, you know where you can go. He could easily say that the problems come from 1918. It is the behavior of an irresponsible government when you look for your own failures and the reasons for defeat not in yourself, but in objective law, constantly trying to push the responsibility away from yourself. He will deceive and manipulate as much as possible. What’s in it for him?”
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We asked about the solution to the situation, for example, the role of extra-parliamentary political forces, and Samvel Abrahamyan answered, “I do not know, I have a vague idea of the solution now. We are already in a deadlock. Of course, there must be a way out of the deadlock, but at the moment I do not know what it is. The solutions that might be offered now are not realistic for this situation. These people do not feel a responsibility towards the state, neither the government nor the parliamentary opposition, it is obvious.”
At the end of the conversation, Samvel Abrahamyan said that the way out of the current situation may be clearer after a while.
Tatev Harutyunyan
