“What are you making a fuss about? No one is going to hand over Voskepar and Kirants.” That is the main “argument” of Pashinyan’s propagandists. Attributing to your opponent something he does not say and then heroically denying it is a rhetorical trick that has been used for at least 2.5 millennia․
Of course, people express their concerns in different ways, with various degrees of emotionality. I will try to formulate in my style what concerns me.
1. Suppressing the protests of residents and other citizens with violence, force, and sometimes hooliganism is a direct reflection of Pashinyan’s whims.
2. Attempts to discredit Reverend Father Bagrat Archimandrite, leader of the Diocese of Tavush, express the same hooligan (Civil Contract) style.
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3. Delimitation between Armenia and Azerbaijan is not a technical issue: it is impossible to implement at the level of deputy prime ministers. It is a political process in which (especially in a parliamentary country) the National Assembly should participate.
4. Delimitation should be a “package” option, but not piecemeal. The parties should simultaneously discuss all grievances against each other in this field and find general solutions for all these cases.
5. Voskepar and Kirants are not surrendering at this moment. The positions around those villages are surrendering. It will not be the Azerbaijani villagers (as our “humanist” prime minister told the British media). The armed forces of Azerbaijan would appear there and pose a deadly threat to the inhabitants of that and other villages. Such a danger will make it impossible for these people to live on their land for months. It is not that Pashinyan does not know that.
6. Judging by the map published by the RA government, the territories that undoubtedly belonged to the Armenian SSR will also be handed over to the enemy, and this step contradicts the Alma-Ata declaration so loved by our government, as well as the so often cited 29.8 (or 29,743) per thousand square kilometers. Of those square kilometers, by the way, Azerbaijan has also occupied huge areas in other places and is not going to return.
7. Thus, the RA government violates the territorial integrity of the RA with its activities, which gives grounds to raise the issue of expressing no confidence in that government in the National Assembly, as proposed by the “Hayakve” initiative.
8. The actions and statements of the parliamentary opposition should be political, not “artistic-emotional.”
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
In the photo: the 7th-century church of Voskepar, which will remain on the Armenian side but on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
