ARF Hai Tahd Central Council statement on Artsakh and democracy
The prime minister of the Republic of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, is under a “delusion.” Having embraced a failed version of Bolshevik ideology and recognized the internal administrative borders of the Soviet Union as the interstate borders of the post-Soviet Union, Nikol Pashinyan has also failed to understand the meaning and essence of democracy. According to official figures, the leader of the Civil Contract party, which received less than the votes of 50% of the votes of citizens of the Republic of Armenia, appears to believe that this alone has established his “dictatorship.” He does not understand that democracy is the rule of the majority while, at the same time, guaranteeing the human and civil rights of the minority.
Nikol Pashinyan has declared: “Any step that contradicts the choice made by the people of the Republic of Armenia — and the people have said that the Karabakh Movement is over and will not continue — any attempt to continue the Karabakh Movement at other levels will bring about mirror responses, and yes, that process may create problems.” Nikol Pashinyan ignores the fact that at least more than half a million citizens of the Republic of Armenia, through the exercise of their voting rights, do not share his — or even the majority’s — view that “the Karabakh Movement is over and will not continue.” Those more than half a million citizens of the Republic of Armenia have the right to voice their views and to pursue them, even if “that process may create problems.”
Moreover, Nikol Pashinyan, whose party has consistently renounced and continues to renounce everything that is pan-Armenian and national, seeks to compel Armenians living outside the borders of the Republic of Armenia — regardless of their citizenship — to be deprived of the right to hold their own views, to express those views and to pursue their realization. He states: “I am saying this very directly: the more the Dashnak (ARF) lobbying in the United States exerted efforts in that direction, the more steps they took, they will receive…” This is Nikol Pashinyan’s understanding of democracy: “dictatorship” — if not of the proletariat, then of the Civil Contract party.
At the same time, and consistently, Nikol Pashinyan continues his conduct of justifying Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian and anti-Armenia actions, characterizing the propaganda of “Western Azerbaijan” directed against the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia, as well as the Azerbaijani state’s actions in pursuit of that agenda, merely as “mirror responses.”
For Nikol Pashinyan, who has understood nothing — or understands nothing—of history and present-day reality, Armenian national political thought is the reason why Turkey carried out the Armenian Genocide; why Azerbaijan pursued a genocidal policy against Artsakh by ethnically cleansing it of its Armenian population; and why Azerbaijan and Turkey today, acting together, threaten the very existence of the Republic of Armenia — threatening it, at the very least, with war — unless their demands are met.
Nikol Pashinyan has declared that “all attempts to continue the Karabakh Movement […] will be assessed by us as attempts to drag the people of Armenia into a new adventure, and within the scope of our authority and the law, we will do everything to stop them.” Nikol Pashinyan hopes in this way to conceal the fact that it is the policies and actions of his own eight years in power that have “dragged the people of Armenia into a new adventure,” placing even the Republic of Armenia itself under threat.
With renewed determination and purpose, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s Hai Tahd (Armenian Cause) network will continue to make an active contribution to the struggle of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in defense of all the rights of the Armenian people, including the people of Artsakh, everywhere.
