Military Coup Means Armed Forces Take Control of Political Power, Marukyan

LHK leader Edmon Marukyan does not believe that the statement issued by the General Staff represents an attempt at a military coup. This was stated by the LHK president during a conversation with journalists in the National Assembly: “Our people are constantly deceived and manipulated, and now they have been deceived and manipulated again. A military coup means that the armed forces go and take political power into their hands, arresting the leaders of civilian authorities and bringing troops into the streets. There has been no such attempt in Armenia, and the Prime Minister is manipulating the General Staff's statement in order to use it for his own benefit and to find consensus among the citizens in this situation.”

Edmon Marukyan insisted that he is personally against an armed coup, and if such an attempt occurred, he would be on the opposite side: “The Prime Minister is consistently decapitating an armed force that is already under attack. There are no corrupt generals left in the armed forces, no thieving generals, and in the three years, no corrupt general has been tried. In other words, the Prime Minister has gone against those people who have been awarded the title of national hero, the rank of general, by him. If they were bad, they should not have received titles; if they are good, then there’s an attempt to destroy the armed forces.”

Marukyan stated that he is ready to be a mediator between the armed forces and the authorities, as well as between the forces standing in the streets and the government, but this cannot be done under conditions where there are no officials and state institutions in the country. According to Marukyan, the government is afraid to create a fact-finding group, they want to decapitate the army to eliminate the evidence.