What Does Pashinyan's Resignation Mean and Why on Citizen's Day?

On Sunday, April 25, Nikol Pashinyan submitted his resignation. According to Pashinyan, it is symbolic, and this resignation means that they are returning the power received from the citizen on Citizen's Day back to the citizen, so that he can determine the future fate of power through elections.

Recall that after the change of government, Pashinyan’s administration made one of its first steps by submitting a bill to amend the law on “Days of Celebration and Commemoration,” which declared the last Saturday of April as Citizen's Day. Citizen's Day has only been celebrated once in Armenia, on April 27, 2019, when Nikol Pashinyan and other officials closed several central streets in Yerevan and organized a barbecue party that day. It remains unclear how the barbecue party relates to citizenship. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the authorities from allocating 124 million drams from the state budget for organizing festive events.

However, in 2020, due to the pandemic, that day was not celebrated. Yet the most important thing is that even if the holiday is called Citizen's Day, it does not necessarily mean that it is a celebration for the citizens. From the authorities’ perspective, this day symbolizes that the citizens were able to bring about changes in Armenia's internal political life in 2018 and achieve a change of government; however, in reality, it is a holiday for the authorities, lying at the core of the “revolutionary calendar.”

The question is that those who proclaimed themselves as revolutionaries managed to promise the citizens a prosperous life and security, using the accumulated dissatisfaction among people to come to power. In this way, Pashinyan and his teammates played on the emotions of citizens to achieve their political goals. If these individuals, who presented themselves under the guise of revolutionaries, truly cared about the citizen and the state, then Pashinyan would not have declared, “Either I will be elected Prime Minister at the request of the people and with their support, or there will be no Prime Minister elected at all in the Republic of Armenia.” In short, their motivation was confined solely to a simple equation of seizing power.

To maintain their seats, the authorities began to occupy the public with the imitation of changes, lowering the political arena to a kindergarten level, while dividing society into blacks and whites. Thus, in reality, citizens were ignored, lost their identity, and became an incomprehensible crowd, since the authorities had already decided everything in their place, and if they took certain steps, they proclaimed that they were doing it in the name of the citizens and the people.

Meanwhile, Pashinyan promised at his rallies that every significant step would be discussed with the people, even declaring that Republic Square was the agora of the modern era of humanity, but that did not prevent him from making decisions unilaterally without considering the opinions of citizens. Fateful decisions: Pashinyan promised to present any solution to the Karabakh issue that was on the table to the judgment of the people, but in reality, he not only hid the actual negotiating details from the public but also led the people to a disgraceful defeat under the slogans of victory during the Karabakh war. This may be the reason why no Armenian leader has ever found themselves in such a wretched and humiliating state, being disrespected both abroad and within the country.

Overall, Pashinyan has become a symbol of capitulation. And now he has only one aspiration: to once again deceive and mislead the very proud citizens, shifting the responsibility smoothly from his shoulders onto theirs. It remains to be seen whether our society wants to be deceived again and take on the guilt and responsibility of this one individual...