Anahit Bakhshyan's Open Letter to Pashinyan: 'I Was Wrong Addressing You as 'My Son'', Yuran and I Could Not Have a Guy Like You

Education expert Anahit Bakhshyan has written an open letter to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan:

“I participated in the opening of the classroom named after the HERO OF ARTSAKH ALEN MARGARYAN at the Yerevan School named after Derennik Demirchyan. I returned extremely emotional and sad and was scrolling through the news when I read somewhere that you said: the number one hero of the Republic of Armenia is the working and tax-paying citizen. I gave you a loud slap in my mind (I hope you won’t judge me as a political prisoner), even though I also understand your reasoning well. But at that moment, all the heroes of our third republic, thanks to whom we exist today and whose absence has made you the HEAD OF OUR STATE, flashed before my eyes.

Did you understand whom I mean—NATIONAL HEROES VAZGEN SARGSYAN and KAREN DEMIRCHYAN? Although why am I surprised? I am sure that you were at the opening of the National Assembly museum in 2018 and did not see that there is nothing displayed in that museum regarding the October 27, 1999, terrorist attack in the National Assembly hall; in other words, the pictures of the heroes I mentioned are not even there. I now understand why you did not notice this serious gap in the museum: they are not your heroes.

How can you devalue the word HERO so much? Perhaps it is because, like you, your political associates have not served and do not understand how a person can sacrifice their life for the HOMELAND, for the STATE? You seem to prefer the taxpayer, who is obliged to give a small part of their pocket to the state, over A LEN MARGARYAN, who gave his 21-year-old life. He was a talented young man, already accepted to BOSTON UNIVERSITY, and had the chance to avoid enlistment but decided to SERVE the HOMELAND and then continue his education?

What moral right do you have to continue leading our STATE and PUBLIC SERVICE, especially against the urgent issues facing the ARMY and the EXPECTED WAR? With such a meaningless statement, you undermine both the ARMENIAN STATE and the VISION OF STATEHOOD, for heaven’s sake. The most painful fact for me is that after your statement, I see the FUTURE OF OUR STATE as more threatened when I myself am a believer in a democratic state and believed in the 'velvet' revolution.

I always remember: Yuran said in one of his interviews that having a fair and strong STATE should not be the end goal for a DEMOCRACY, but rather a means. Of course, your and Yuran's national value systems are very different. Yuran was a Nzhdehian, while I don’t know what you and your colleagues are,” Bakhshyan wrote.