Opposition conveys its demand to Pashinyan to resign
YEREVAN, May 4. /ARKA/. Several Armenian opposition parliament members arrived at parliament today to read out a formal demand that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan resign.
Armen Rustamyan, an MP from the opposition Hayastan alliance, said they were dispatched by the people who gathered in front of the parliament building to convey their demand that Pashinyan resign.
A statement he read out accused Pashinyan of failing to defend Armenian interests during the negotiation process for a Karabakh settlement, which led to a war and defeat.
Rustamyan claimed that Pashinyan had admitted earlier that he could have prevented the war and avoid thousands of casualties, but did not do so.
He also recalled that Pashinyan promised in June 2021 to return the Armenian prisoners of war from Azerbaijan in 1-2 months, but there are still Armenian prisoners in Azerbaijan.
‘The Armenian government has failed to fulfill its numerous promises, but it is defending Azerbaijan’s efforts of downgrading the status of Nagorno-Karabakh and recognizing it as part of Azerbaijan,’ Rustamyan said. According to him, Nikol Pashinyan is illegitimate and has no mandate to make new concessions.
In his response, Pashinyan argued that the Karabakh negotiation process had been failed by ex-president Serzh Sargsyan, who had admitted it in a statement made in parliament on April 17, 2018, saying that "the negotiation process is halted and does not inspire optimism because Azerbaijan's demands are unrealistic and unacceptable to us."
“Serzh Sargsyan said from this rostrum that we should not hope that Azerbaijan will not try to solve the Karabakh issue militarily," Pashinyan recalled.
Regarding his words that ‘international community calls on Armenia to scale down demands on Karabakh," Pashinyan said Armenia accepted the Madrid principles as a basis for negotiations and "it was from that moment that previous authorities recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan".
"If you think that by shifting the blame on the former authorities, you can justify the failures that have fallen on this country because of you, you are deeply mistaken," Rustamyan retorted.
After that the opposition lawmakers left the session hall.-0-
