Rejecting the Proposal for a Closed Meeting Indicates the Opposition's Disinterest in Understanding the Situation: Arshakyan

Rejecting the proposal for a closed meeting with the Prime Minister indicates that the opposition is not inclined to understand the challenges facing Armenia. This was stated by the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Hakob Arshakyan, in a Facebook post, commenting on the rejection of the meeting proposal by the "Armenia" and "Honorable" factions.

“Today we learned that the opposition factions ‘Armenia’ and ‘Honorable’ have rejected the offer made by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to hold a closed discussion about negotiations with Azerbaijan. I would like to inform our citizens that these same opposition MPs have repeatedly emphasized the need to meet with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, and other officials. For this purpose, they initiated an extraordinary session of the National Assembly. However, upon receiving the opportunity for a closed discussion, they have inexplicably rejected the meeting’s proposal.”

“The justification that there is a need for an open discussion is unfounded, considering that such discussions, in a question-and-answer format, take place during each session of the National Assembly. However, in such an open format, for understandable reasons, many nuances of the negotiation process cannot be openly discussed.”

The fact of refusing the meeting, as well as the circumstance that the ‘Armenia’ coalition has refused to participate in various international organizations and friendly groups representing Armenia, in itself proves that our opposition partners are not inclined to understand the challenges facing Armenia, to comprehend the former and current state of negotiations, and are also not inclined to contribute to overcoming these challenges with a unified state agenda—an agenda for which they were sent to the National Assembly by thousands of voters and receive a salary from the state budget.

“I hope that our opposition partners will reconsider this dangerous course of action and will not jeopardize the desire and objective of the Armenian people to collectively overcome external challenges,” wrote Arshakyan.