RPA vice-chair confident: Armenian opposition must first defeat  Pashinyan in "war against memory"

ArmInfo. If the Armenian opposition wants to remove Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan from power, it must first defeat him in the "war against memory."  This message was delivered by Armen Ashotyan, Deputy Chairman of the  Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), political prisoner, from Vardashen  Prison, two weeks after the latest parliamentary elections in  Armenia.

Ashotyan recalled that the elections were more of an electoral sham  than a manifestation of the will of the Armenian people. However,  according to him, the problem is much deeper and is not limited to  the results of the rigged elections and the crisis that followed.  "Everyone is dissatisfied with the election results:  Pashinyan, who  failed to secure the coveted constitutional majority, and the  opposition, which failed to achieve the necessary figures to remove  the Armenian prime minister from power. But I think this was natural  and inevitable, and it was obvious that the crisis that arose in 2020  could not be overcome through political means, namely parliamentary  elections," the politician noted.

The reason for this, as the RPA deputy chairman explained, is that  following the 44-day war of 2020, the Armenian people are in an  ongoing, debilitating crisis-not a political one, but a systemic  crisis of values.  According to him, during the previous elections,  Armenian citizens as a society chose not only between options for  their future but also between assessments of their past. "That is,  with our vote, we not only answered the question of 'where are we  going,' but also the question of 'where are we from?' We must have  the courage to admit that, despite all the shameful pressure,  falsifications, interference, and pre-election bribes, Pashinyan has  managed to cultivate adherents to his 'new morality' in society. Yes,  he doesn't yet have a majority behind this agenda, but the united  opposition must acknowledge that there is no majority behind  'classical patriotism' either," Ashotyan emphasized.

Meanwhile, according to him, Pashinyan has provoked and is waging a  "memory war" against the Armenian people. "And if we want to win and  remove him from power, then we must first defeat him in this very  'memory war.' As the Roman historian Tacitus wrote: 'Those who go  into battle should remember their ancestors behind them, and their  descendants ahead,'" the politician concluded.