We Must Pressure Pashinyan to Stay Away from the Army and Go to Elections: Edmon Marukyan

The only way to change this government is through elections; other options will not work. This was stated today by Edmon Marukyan, the leader of the 'Enlightened Armenia' faction in the National Assembly, during a live broadcast on Facebook while discussing recent events and their proposals for overcoming the crisis.

He noted that a campaign is being carried out against him and his team's ideology, which, according to him, is aimed at finding a solution to the situation, yet many forces oppose those solutions.

Marukyan emphasized that a deep crisis emerged since November 10, and even then, the 'Enlightened Armenia' party had published a resolution that was not accepted.

Regarding the potential for election fraud, Marukyan remarked that elections have always been rigged in Armenia, except for 2018, because there was no need to do so at that time. 'There has never been such a strong opposition, and you should do everything to prevent fraud. This government will not be able to rig the elections; how can a government that allows airplanes to be stolen under its nose rig elections? Their rigged elections would need to be rigged three times over to be considered valid. This government can’t do anything; they are allowing planes to be taken right under their noses,' he stated.

According to Marukyan, the people must decide; if they want a resignation, they must pressure Pashinyan to go to elections and stay away from the army. 'If we don't want this option, there will be victims, there will be bloodshed, and we don’t want that,' he said, adding that this must happen to prevent witnessing past mistakes again and avoid further casualties.

The deputy pointed out that the situation is very clear—Pashinyan must make concessions and should not make the army a scapegoat, nor should he allow this chaos to continue. 'I don’t want us to reach a deadline and say, ‘Oh, what a terrible thing happened.’