Extensively Crafted Electoral Step is Reducing Service Term to 1.5 Years: Manukyan

This government has not taken any practical steps regarding the transformation of our armed forces into a professional army over the past years. Gegham Manukyan, a member of the "Armenia" faction, stated this during a press conference with journalists at the National Assembly today.

“On numerous occasions, in the presence of the Minister of Defense, we have criticized that the physical, psychological, and health preparedness of our citizens involved in combat duty is a serious issue. This draft mentions salary increases based on certification, but certification does not solve the problem of transforming the armed forces into a professional army, and the most important issue for that is increasing the salary fund of the entire armed forces, which can only happen through a change in the base salary,” he said.

Gegham Manukyan referred to the proposal to reduce the service term from 2 years to 1.5 years as a well-crafted electoral step. “This fake thesis of Nikol Pashinyan, claiming that look, there is peace, is trying to be placed in this sauce. Serious justifications, analyses, statistics, and demographic issues are required for such a radical change. The hastiness regarding this draft is that when any law is being developed, they study how this law relates to other laws and present it as a package of amendments,” he noted.

“In February of last year, there was a well-known draft by Hayk Sargsyan regarding evaders from military service, which specifies a different term, providing a certain amount of money for not serving 24 months and another amount for serving 18 months. In addition, this draft does not state that the law applies to soldiers currently being conscripted into the armed forces this year. As a result, a conditional Gegham Manukyan, who will be conscripted in the summer of 2026, will serve for one year, while another soldier serving alongside him will serve for two years. This creates a psychological problem; there cannot be two types of soldiers in the armed forces,” Manukyan expressed.