Armenia’s third President and Chairman of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) Serzh Sargsyan delivered remarks at the 17th RPA Congress on Saturday.
“I resigned in 2018 wishing peace, harmony and sense of reason to the country. I left to pacify our people, which had been deceived, manipulated and poisoned with great portions of lies and disinformation by these populists and their foreign sponsors which had clearly geopolitical goals. I left not to allow bloodshed in our country and to give opportunity for the thousands of people in the square to build the country of their dreams and to continue with the same enthusiasm and demand the would-be government to honor every promise they gave and be accountable to the people,” he said.
The former president underlined that he would only be happy if that was the case, and “if peace, harmony and sense of reason ruled in the country”.
“All of this has, unfortunately, been reduced to zero in the past three and a half years,” Sargsyan stated.
In his words, today many people can see the real goals behind the veil of so-called “velvet and people’s revolution”.
“Obviously I was standing in the way of those who proposed a heavy dilemma at the hands of these puppets: either to resign or to stay in power by using force in my own country and allowing a bloodshed. It is not difficult to imagine the scenarios that the screenwriters or real beneficiaries of this so-called “revolution” would have for Armenia – calling its leader a dictator, labeling us as rogue state etc, would trigger new waves of protests to bring instability to continue pushing for my resignation. These people would be utmost disinterested in the fact that domestic instability seriously increased the external threat level, that it instantly was bringing more escalation on the border and the enemy was ready to seize such opportunities. They could not care less, but even maybe intentionally pursued this goal. But I did care. And took due consideration of all of it,” the RPA head said.
He highlighted that in 2018 his goal was not to cling to power, but to protect Artsakh.
“Our government was standing in the way of all those, whose thinking about Artsakh and the future of Armenia did not match with ours. We did not belong to anyone, we were native and pursued our own national interests – something not in tune with their aspirations. My goal in 2018 was not clinging to power. My goal was to protect Artsakh, and by extension – also Armenia. I was nominated for the position of the Prime Minister only and purely to further strengthen our already strong negotiating positions in the peace process and try to avert the tragedy we are living through today. Wasn’t it clear enough that unfavorable resolution of the Artsakh issue would cost dearly on Armenia too? I was convinced in that and pursuing exactly that, whereas I was accused of desi...
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