The Armenian opposition united around the Nikol Pashinyan protest movement, as the goals of all opposition parties, including the largest "Prosperous Armenia", coincided in the desire to rid the republic of the oppression of the ruling Republican Party and establish a truly democratic regime in the country, a member of the Armenian National Congress, ex-mayor of Yerevan Vahagn Khachatryan, who is taking part today in protests against the RPA, told Vestnik Kavkaza.
"On Monday, our party officially announced that it joins the protests, and the day before we issued a call to the government not to use force. The opinion of our party coincides with Nikol Pashinyan's current actions - we have always wanted the power that came as a result of the massive falsification of the parliamentary election in April last year, resigned and announced new elections. All the time that the ANC has been in opposition, we perfectly know how the system built by the Republican Party works, and how it harms not only Armenian citizens, but also the whole state," he said.
An important event is joining of "Prosperous Armenia", which has a significant number of seats in the parliament, to the protests, as its solidarity with Pashinyan's Yelk faction allows to achieve a change of power in the country by constitutional means.
The former mayor of Yerevan said he expects that the government could be completely disbanded in the near future. "So far, we know that the authorities are ready to resign, but only if early elections are announced - but that's not enough. It would be wrong, because as long as electoral legislation allows oligarchs to participate in elections, especially such people like Karen Karapetyan and Samvel Karapetyan, the new election would be a loss of everything we have achieved over these days. Now, we and Nikol Pashinyan advocate forming a provisional government that will take several steps," he said.
"First, all members of the incumbent government must resign, then the legislation on elections must be changed, and only after that the new parliamentary election can be announced. Yesterday the RPA was not ready for talks on these issues, but today, apparently, they realized that they have no choice. The authorities should simply decide to leave quietly and peacefully and give an opportunity to hold free elections," Vahagn Khachatryan called on.
The former mayor of Yerevan also drew attention to changes in police behavior. "There were police officers here in the morning for two hours, I asked them not to use force in my political statement, and now there is no police here, no one is guarding government buildings. It means that something has changed in the authorities' readiness to use force for suppressing the population," he concluded.
