Independence, Statehood, Citizenship Are Completely Different Formulations of Thought: Nikol Pashinyan

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has sent a congratulatory message on the occasion of the 34th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence of Armenia, stating:

“Dear people, beloved citizens of the Republic of Armenia, on August 23, 1990, the Supreme Council of Soviet Armenia adopted the Declaration of Independence. With this document, the people of Armenia publicly declared their desire to have an independent state and recorded their will.

The reference to the Declaration of Independence was later included in 1995 and remains present in the preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia to this day. However, despite various interpretations, this does not mean that the entire content of the Declaration of Independence is included in the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia and that the content of these two documents is identical. The most vivid evidence of this is Article 5 of the Declaration, which states: 'The Republic of Armenia establishes armed forces, internal troops, and state and public security bodies subordinate to the Supreme Council to ensure its security and the inviolability of its borders.'

Despite such a formulation in the Declaration, according to the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, the Armed Forces, Police forces, and state and public security bodies are not subordinate to the country's parliament but were, until the 2015 constitutional amendment, subordinate to the President of the country, and after April 2018, to the Government. This directly and unequivocally demonstrates that the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia expresses only those provisions of the Declaration of Independence that are directly, literally, and textually articulated, and any other interpretation is simply inappropriate.

Dear people, beloved citizens of the Republic of Armenia, independence, sovereignty, statehood are irreplaceable institutions for the preservation of our identity and autonomy, and on August 23, 1990, we made our first attempt to engage with these institutions and ideologies after a long hiatus. The perceptions and understandings of us—the citizens of the Republic of Armenia—about independence and statehood have significantly changed since then, and I dare to assert that they have become deeper and more comprehensive.

Independence, statehood, citizenship are completely different formulations of thought, completely different planes, and we are stepping onto those planes, adopting and developing those formulations—here and now.

Dear people, beloved citizens of the Republic of Armenia, I congratulate you all on the occasion of August 23, and I send you my recently written poem 'Real Armenia – Republic of Armenia':
We want to see you happy,
But we must see you for that to happen.
Our gazes—far from you—
Have incessantly searched for homelands.
We want to see you happy,
But we must see that you indeed are Armenia,
We must want to see you happy,
In you, with you, inseparable from you.
We are obliged to make you happy,
Your smile, tears wiped away,
Coming out of the house of mourning,
With our moist eyes of life.
And your living must be eternal,
The source of our love, the bastion of our hope.
Happiness is your home at last,
Our old homeland, our dear state.
You are everything that we are,
Our aspirations will not leave you again,
We did not lose you, but found you again,
Our dear state, our old homeland.”