No One Can Decide for Us Whether We Have a Place in Parliament, Especially Those Who Come from the Streets: Tonoyan to Authorities

Member of the National Assembly from the 'Bright Armenia' faction Iveta Tonoyan made a post on her Facebook page, addressing Prime Minister Pashinyan's speech in the National Assembly today. Tonoyan specifically noted that no one can decide for them whether they have a place in parliament or not. This decision belongs exclusively to the people.

Tonoyan's post is as follows:

“When arrogance and imbalanced rhetoric become a political category. Today, we again had to listen to another fiery speech in the parliament hall—mixed with pathos, threats, and non-political rhetoric. Indeed, the country's number one figure spoke in an emotional and frantic manner, blending the wet and the dry entirely together.

I, of course, understand both the existing fear and anxiety, as well as the now uncontrollable panic, but I regret to inform you that arrogance and imbalance are not political categories. Well, if you are that confident in your powers, why don’t you calm down? Why have you been talking about BHK for days, going to sleep and waking up to this topic?

I think the answer is obvious. And what initiated all of this... a simple question that has a simple answer and an equally straightforward sequence of events. Gagik Tsarukyan’s well-known speech was immediately followed by a low-quality mask show, fictitious criminal cases, the clumsy process of stripping immunity, blackmail, and political persecution...

Here, briefly, is what you are capable of, what your authority is capable of doing to maintain a shaky and fleeing chair at all costs.

Nevertheless, no matter how clouded your mind may be, remember one simple truth: no one can decide for us whether we have a place in parliament or not, especially those who come from the streets. Our place is determined exclusively by our voters and our people. Moreover, your actual place will soon be decided by that very same people.

So I advise all the proponents of fascism and dictatorship to calmly sit in their places.

Regarding the already over-discussed and boring topic of vote-buying, allow me to remind you: back in 2018, when the first parliamentary elections were to be held after the power change, those who rejected the old and were ringing the bells of the new were trying by all means to fabricate a vote-buying case against our team members, forcibly detaining the leaders and employees of the Bright Armenia party structures in Yerevan and the regions, using cheap tries of blackmail. There were many attempts, but the results were unsatisfactory, and the directive from above remained unfulfilled. Why? Because they couldn’t dig up any arguments to fabricate a case.

Today, when the country is on the brink of destruction, when the patience of a starving and unemployed people is overflowing, when the authorities feel impending doom, an attempt is once again being made to revive the unfinished ‘Vote-Buying Operation’ by instructions received from the highest level. It is, indeed, disgusting to see and hear the cheap tricks of preserving one’s own chair and comfortable life at any cost, the faces that beat the drums about popular love while thinking little about the people, the grandiloquent speeches about the country leading it towards destruction and incompetent policies.

Well, if you are so self-assured, so popular, so velvet, and as you love to repeat, so courageous, let’s go for snap parliamentary elections, let’s take a step and see where you will end up and where we will be seen. Or is your courage only expressed through arrogance?”