Artur Sakunts: “Serzh Sargsyan managed to free the premises of the Patrol and Guard Service Regiment, but he still faces a problem with RA citizens”
11:46, August 2, 2016 | News, Other news
“‘Sasna Tsrer’ group members definitely explained their surrender, namely to avoid bloodshed, which might be inevitable, if they carried on staying there. The authorities were getting ready to attack, especially after the NSS statement of July 30.
‘Sasna Tsrer’ group definitely preserved the logic that it did not want to commit any bloodshed; this step merely results from the fact that regretfully there are no other effective and efficient means and methods to solve the challenges existing so far and to make changes in RA. The behavior of the authorities in the recent 14 days definitely attests to this as we saw only force methods on their part”, Artur Sakunts, Chairman of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor expressed his opinion on the surrender of the armed group that seized the Patrol and Guard Service Regiment. According to him, the authorities do not understand absolutely the current situation in the country. “So far, we have received no message from the authorities. Serzh Sargsyan made a statement no sooner than 4-5 days later and they only demanded the surrender. It can be noted that Serzh Sargsyan managed to free the premises of the Patrol and Guard Service Regiment, but he still faces a problem with RA citizens. We saw that throughout this period, a number of protests were held in Sari Tagh district, Spandaryan village in Sisian, small-scaled protests were held in Vanadzor, Gyumri and Kapan. Serzh Sargsyan saw only ‘Sasna Tsrer’ group as his target but did not see the public, which held protests with many thousands of participants. During such protests, people again and again demanded the resignation of the authorities. And he has not taken a single step to enter into dialogue with those citizens.
Now we have a situation in which Serzh Sargsyan seized the Patrol and Guard Service Regiment but was unable to seize entire Armenia. The behavior of the authorities now is of paramount importance.”
Artur Sakunts is sure that the exerted violence will lead to further outbreaks of protests. “If he makes no steps towards changes and keeps the status quo of using force, he will directly provoke further crisis situations. That is, the crisis has not been overcome; it’s silenced but still persists.”
According to Artur Sakunts, the whole political system, except for 1-2 politicians, emasculated again. Serzh Sargsyan reaped the fruits he had sown consistently during his presidency.
In response to our question that there are rumors that after these incidents, Serzh Sargsyan wants to get rid of Vladimir Gasparyan, Artur Sakunts said, ”It makes no essential difference to us who wants to get rid of whom, i.e. whether Serzh Sargsyan wants to get rid of Gasparyan or Gasparyan wants to get rid of Serzh Sargsyan, since another Serzh Sargsyan or another Vova Gasparyan will come up. After the April war, we also saw that such changes do not matter at all.”