“Take it that we have resigned from our mandates,” Artur Vanetsyan, the leader of the I Have Honor faction of the RA National Assembly and the leader of the “Homeland” party, said at the April 18 press conference in Freedom Square, answering the question of whether they are not going to resign the mandates.
He mentioned, “We are here, we are on the street, we are not in the parliament, we are with the people, we are standing on the ground, we communicate with the people every day. For my part, I do not think about what I should do in the parliament anymore. What should I discuss in a parliament where they announce that Artsakh can be part of Azerbaijan, where they say that an Armenian can live under the subordination of Azerbaijan? I do not know what else to do there! So, whether to resign the mandate or not is a technical issue.” In his opinion, the change of power will be carried out in the parliament under the pressure of the street. “We will need those mandates in the parliament to complete that work.”
Artur Vanetsyan insisted that this struggle is not for the sake of power, but for the sake of being an Armenian or not, for the sake of Artsakh and Armenia. Speaking about expectations, he said, “The unexpected happened. I did not imagine that so many people would come, the flow is very large, and everyone expects the same to end this chaos. People really understand what danger is threatening them. I did not expect that there would be such a big flow that they would talk or try to understand what would happen. Everyone is ready to fight. They say, promise that this time you will go to the end, you will not go until we get rid of the power of this evil.”
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Artur Vanetsyan assured that he did not undertake the obligation to be the face of the opposition, but came as an RA citizen. Then he informed that the representatives of almost all the opposition parties, his colleagues of the parliamentary opposition were by his side. “I assure you, everyone’s goal is the same. We have decided to carry out the struggle in a decentralized, networked way. We have a clear list of actions, and you will witness the process of protests on a daily basis. This time we will have a serious change in a really short period of time – to achieve the final goal – a strong Armenia, a strong Artsakh, a sovereign state, a state that has preserved its territorial integrity, and well-to-do citizens.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
