Referendum Poses Significant Challenges for Our Security: Sasna Tsrer

The referendum on April 5 poses significant challenges for our national security. This was stated in a press release by the Sasna Tsrer party.

The statement also noted: “First, conducting a referendum under the danger of the coronavirus pandemic is tantamount to consciously triggering an epidemic. Given the dire state of Armenia's civil defense and healthcare systems, such an epidemic can turn into a national disaster.

Moreover, this referendum, which aims to remove members of the illegal constitutional court associated with the previous criminal regime through a mere amendment to a false and illegal article of the constitution, deeply insults our national, civil, and human dignity and jeopardizes our future. It forces us to choose between the bad and the worse, offering a passage under the sword of an anti-national and criminal governance system, which in essence undermines our freedom of will and deprives us of the real opportunity for choice, while simultaneously legitimizing the false and illegal constitution and justifying decades of plunder and the coercion of law.

The reason for this is that Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power as a result of the popular uprising in 2018, and his team, instead of taking steps to liberate us from the deadly dilemma between good and evil through revolution and national consolidation, have become the legal successors of previous criminal regimes and continue to keep us subjected to a rejected system with its false and illegal constitution, laws, institutions, and officials, forcing us to remain in the dead end of the lesser evil.

In the face of such behavior from those in power, it is not surprising that state institutions, the ruling team, and representatives of the anti-national and criminal previous regimes, along with their servile forces, circles, and media, have uniquely united in this so-called game of the referendum and are doing everything possible to ensure the participation of the people in it.

A situation has been created where the referendum, being a highly acceptable and preferable tool of direct democracy and popular sovereignty, will bring about results contrary to them in this specific case.

Considering the above, we demand that the current authorities not artificially create new challenges to national security, specifically that they do not endanger the lives and health of citizens, do not restrict the freedom of the people's will, and do not entangle the public in solving issues that are solely the result of their own failures. Instead, they should finally undertake the mandate given to them by the revolution with the following powers:

1. Revoke the referendum and resolve the issue of the Constitutional Court by making changes to the same article of the constitution that is currently subject to referendum through a decision of the National Assembly, and/or appoint judges to the Constitutional Court and/or consider other alternatives.
2. Renounce the legal succession of previous criminal regimes, provide a legal-political assessment of their activities by the decision of the National Assembly, and recognize the fact of state capture and the usurpation of power.
3. Basing on the legal-political assessment, organize transitional justice, including—criminal justice (Armenian Nuremberg), bringing to responsibility those who served as tools for state capture and usurpation, and—lustration—political, economic, and agency, including prohibiting the activities of parties that were part of the previous regime and the public activities of their leaders.
4. Have a new constitution drafted in accordance with the people's right to the source of power and localizing international experience with the involvement of the entire population by the end of the year, rather than adhering to the non-existent false and illegal constitution, coupled with a public voting process.

Signed by the Secretariat of the Sasna Tsrer Pan-Armenian Party: Ara Papyan, Arkadi Vardanyan, Albert Baghdasaryan, Armenak Kyureghyan, Volodya Avetisyan, Yeghishe Petrosyan.