The former Secretary of the Security Council has clarified that, while still in office, he had also conveyed to the Prime Minister and his colleagues the views and concerns he outlined in his recently published article: the unrealistic prospect of EU membership and the dangers of an impulsive drive towards the West. “And I would have continued trying to convince them,” Grigoryan told CivilNet in an interview, presumably meaning that he would have continued had Nikol Pashinyan not decided to appoint Alen Simonyan in his place.
Nikol Pashinyan, who was travelling from Antalya to Dublin with a banana tucked into his breast pocket around the time Grigoryan’s article was published, has yet to comment on the subject. Before that, he had been in Paris. Yesterday, he announced that he would be making a brief visit to Yerevan before heading to Cambodia on November 15 to attend the Francophonie Summit.
Nikol Pashinyan is treating his team members rather mercilessly. The problem is that, following Armen Grigoryan’s article, they have presumably lost sleep and are trying to figure out, in plain language, “where they are being set up to take the fall.”
Any uncertainty or deviation from the norm within the ruling system, or in its immediate orbit, throws its representatives into indescribable confusion and anxiety. And it is obvious that Pashinyan is deliberately prolonging this unusual state of affairs and uncertainty, in no hurry to dispel the fog or send any signal to his so-called teammates. This may mean that Pashinyan is administering “shock therapy”, which naturally deepens the questions troubling all those who, besides scrupulously carrying out Nikol Pashinyan’s instructions, are also capable of formulating questions of their own.
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But since even independent questions are apparently raised only in response to “SMS” instructions, those capable of formulating them find themselves in an even more difficult position. The questions are there, but the message authorising them to voice those questions is late in coming. Perhaps it is late because Nikol Pashinyan himself is still looking for some answers—from Paris to Cambodia, even though his former Secretary of the Security Council is effectively saying that, in the end, he will get the answers to all his questions from Moscow.
Hakob BADALYAN
