People unware of war or army lead to loss of homeland and thousands of victims - Vahe Hovhannisyan

ArmInfo. When people come to power who have no idea about war, how to prevent or stop it, and who know nothing about the army, it leads to the complete loss of the Motherland and thousands of victims. This opinion was expressed on  his Facebook page by political scientist, co-founder of the  Alternative Projects group Vahe Hovhannisyan in connection with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's call for debates with former presidents of Armenia on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process.

The political scientist expressed the opinion that the deviation from discussing modern history gave Pashinyan the opportunity to distort and falsify the events that took place before everyone's eyes.  According to him, the topic that arose between the Prime Minister and representatives of the former presidents cannot be considered only as  a matter of four people.

"In order to have a future, we must not falsify our common past. This should not be limited to simple denials and answers. It is necessary to take advantage of the situation, develop the topic and "beat him on his own field". Start talking about the so-called "former" and deprive him of this tool of manipulation. This is important for improving public sentiment and eliminating the social defect of our modern society," said Hovhannisyan.

At the same time, moving on to the topic of personalities, the  political scientist called the comparison of all former presidents of Armenia with the current authorities offensive. According to him, former presidents, namely Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan are very different personalities, with different styles of governance, ideas, thinking and worldviews, and therefore it is extremely difficult to give general formulations to their activities. However, Hovhannisyan continued, during the times of all these former leaders of Armenia, everything would have been done to avoid war, and not vice versa. In addition, he noted that in the event of a war, it is impossible for it to be of such quality, scale and duration, since these people knew the political and military ways  to stop the conflict and understood the value of a soldier's life.

When the "distinguished ones" point to some incident from the Robert Kocharyan period (the incident in the Poplavok restaurant, when Kocharyan's security guard accidentally killed a citizen - ed.) and try to collect likes due to this, it is necessary to clearly say: yes, it was a tragic incident that should not have happened, but it was not a consequence of a political or other decision. In contrast to this, today we have the endless Yerablur, which was the result of a political and state decision, since not ending the war in time was a conscious political and historical choice," Hovhannisyan stated.

In this regard, the political scientist also recalled that during the  4-day April war of 2016, the third president of Armenia, Serzh  Sargsyan, consciously lost his personal image and rating in order to prevent further casualties. "In those days, political circles, those who sat in soft rooms, demanded that the "Yerevan bourgeois" return the height of Lele Tepe. Serzh Sargsyan made a conscious military-political decision not to do this in order to exclude new victims. After that, Nikol and his little-known team held a "caliper" in their hands for months and shouted how many hectares Serzh gave up. The public liked it then too," the political scientist recalled. 

At the same time, according to Hovhannisyan, after the defeat in the 44-day war and the loss of Artsakh, the same government organizes large-scale "binges" and TikTok videos. As the political scientist noted, it is necessary to get out of the topic of the former, without avoiding conversations about serious mistakes and omissions that were made during the period of these persons' stay in power. However, it is impossible to allow the current government to falsify and distort the recent past, thereby finally depriving the country of a future.

"The three former presidents of Armenia are completely different people and different figures, with different value systems. But they have one obvious historical commonality: under them, Armenia was not the losing side, in a broken, humiliated and ruined state. And today's historical stage of aping must be overcome by talking about it directly and loudly. Talk not with these authorities, but with each other. Talk, and not argue. Of course, there should be no debates with them, and at all levels - lies cannot be legitimized. They should be disposed of as a bad and temporary transplant. And the conversation should be within us and for us. We need a future," the  political scientist concluded.

Earlier, Nikol Pashinyan stated that since 1994, that is, after the  ceasefire, the negotiation process was conducted exclusively around the return of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. These statements by the Armenian Prime Minister were harshly reacted to in the offices of the RA presidents, under whom the negotiation process was taking place. In response to the criticism, Pashinyan invited the presidents to a  public debate on this issue. The offices of the three Armenian  presidents refused to hold a public debate, advising Pashinyan to look at the World Wide Web, where all the information about the progress and content of the negotiations around the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has long been publicly available. 

Pashinyan, however, did not calm down, calling on the former  presidents of Armenia to take advantage of his proposal for a debate, or retire and stop commenting on his theses.