THE JUNE 20 SPECIAL ELECTION SHOULD BE CONVERTED INTO A NATIONAL REFERENDUM ON CONSOLIDATION OF ARMENIA’S INDEPENDENCE, SOVEREIGNTY
Posted on June. 17. 2021
BY APPO JABARIAN
Executive Publisher / Managing Editor
USA Armenian Life Magazine (English-language print edition)
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On Sunday, June 20, citizens of the Republic of Armenia will vote to decide whether the old regime kleptocracy, or the incumbent Pashinyan regime or Armenian patriotic forces will come to power.
The old regime kleptocracy is saddled with the responsibility of looting the Armenian state; selling-off of state assets to foreign entities such as Russia for pennies on the dollar in order to secure their hold on power and continue unabated their monopoly and abuse of power; rejecting and repelling Armenian Diaspora.
The incumbent regime of Acting PM Nikol Pashinyan is accused of giving away ancestral Armenian lands in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh to Turkey’s protégé Azerbaijan during the 44-day Artsakh War.
What were the real motives of that war?
The 44-day anti-Armenian Turkish/Azerbaijani/ISIS terrorist aggression in 2020 clearly aimed to overrun the adjacent Armenian Republic of Artsakh and depopulate it in less than three days; and capture Armenia’s southern region of Syunik/Zankezur.
Such an adverse development would effectively cut off Armenia from Iran and isolate the Armenian state from the outside world causing its demise as a sovereign state.
1920/1921 all over again?
The 1918-1920 Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) had a land mass of about 70,000 sq.km. It included Nakhichevan and Nagorno Karabakh/Artsakh.
In December 1920, DRA fell to Soviet occupation.
In December 2020, claims surfaced accusing the old regime leaders – “former presidents Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan for plotting to herd the Republic of Armenia back into a Soviet-style new rule under dominance of Russia.” One cannot be certain of the validity of these claims.
However, the systematic impoverishment of Armenia during the three decades since its independence through looting of state assets and defrauding of Diaspora investors seems to lend credibility to such claims.
During the Ter-Petrosyan regime (1991-1998) Armenia’s economic infrastructure was dismantled causing an exodus of about one million Armenians. State assets were massively misappropriated. Pres. Ter-Petrosyan offered to surrender the southern Syunik region’s Meghri corridor to Azerbaijan cutting off Armenia from Iran in exchange of the Lachin corridor to Artsakh which Armenian Defense Forces had already liberated during the 1992-1994 Artsakh Liberation War. Absurd?
During the Kocharyan regime (1998-2008) Armenia’s economy was kept more or less stagnant causing an exodus of an additional quarter million Armenians. Kocharyan’s infamous Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanyan shamelessly stated that Armenia considers the Armenian liberated territories as ‘occupied,’ and offered to return them to Azerbaijan basically in return for nothing. Furthermore, in the 2000’s Pres. Kocharyan effectively ejected Artsakh as a legitimate negotiating party from then ongoing negotiations with Azerbaijan. Kocharyan also sold-off Armenia’s railroad network, Iranian-Armenian oil pipelines and Medzamor Atomic energy stations to Russian entities effectively surrendering Armenia’s strategic state assets to foreign private parties while needlessly triggering Armenian dependence.
During the Sargsyan regime (2008-2018) Armenia’s economy remained more of the same. Pres. Sargsyan peddled the anti-Armenia Turkish Protocols effectively undermining Justice for the 1915-1923 Turkish-executed Armenian Genocide and Massive Dispossession along Armenia’s legitimate land and reparations claims against Turkey.
In 1921, DRA was dismembered. The Soviet occupation forces ‘gifted’ both Nakhichevan and Nagorno Karabakh/Artsakh to newly-created Azerbaijan.
In 2020, developments in South Caucasus/Eastern Armenian Highlands eerily reminds the reader of similar developments that took place exactly a century ago.
Armenia’s southern region of Syunik/Zankezur connects Armenia with Iran while blocking Turkey’s neo-Ottoman ambitions of eastward expansion toward Central Asia.
In early 1921, the Soviet Red Army in close cooperation with the Kemalist Turkish Army began massive military operations against Armenians of Syunik/Zankezur aiming to occupy it and to eventually ‘gift’ it to Azerbaijan. To their credit, Syunik Armenians led by General Karekin Nejdeh mounted fierce resistance and stalled both armies for several months causing an international embarrassment to Moscow and Ankara. It was only after receiving Soviet Russia’s written promises to keep the Syunik region as a part of Soviet Armenia that Gen. Nejdeh agreed to surrender the region to Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. After the conflict, Nejdeh, his soldiers, and many prominent Armenian intellectuals, including leaders of the first independent Republic of Armenia, crossed the border into the neighboring Iranian city of Tabriz.
About a century later, in the aftermath of the 44-day anti-Armenian Turkish/Azerbaijani/ISIS terrorist aggression in 2020, Turkish Pres. R.T. Erdogan’s proxy Azerbaijani despot Ilham Aliyev boasted to “take Syunik by force if Armenia does not surrender to Baku.”
Why are Turkey and Azerbaijan eager to further carve out Armenia forcibly occupying Syunik?
The current U.S.-Iran negotiations may eventually pave the way to lifting of U.S. sanctions against Iran enabling Iran to start exporting its oil and natural gas. Iran has clearly indicated that its intention is to establish a North-South trade superhighway through Armenia and Georgia extending to Europe and Russia. The proposed mega economic highway may effectively leave out both Azerbaijan and Turkey.
hese are just a few of the issues being debated during the June 20 pre-election campaign.
Without taking sides, it is the aim of this writer to advise the Armenian electorate not to accept election bribes from any party bloc. Voters are being urged to vote for political blocs, parties and individual candidates whose campaign platforms
- propagate Rule of Law;
- Eradication of Poverty through sustainable economic expansion;
- Forcible confiscation of illegally acquired state and private investors’ assets;
- Fast-track integration with very resourceful Armenian Diaspora in contrast to the past three regimes that mistreated Diaspora as a ‘milking cow’ an alienated it in order to have a free hand in looting and leaving Armenia weak, lonely and defenseless just like it turned out to be during the 2020’s 44-day Turkey/Azerbaijan/ISIS terrorist aggression against Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh/Artsakh Republic.
The June 20 special election was forced upon Armenia by outside forces that covertly, and sometimes, overtly backs the old regime kleptocracy’s return to power in order to sabotage Armenia’s economic, political and military development. Certain foreign powers such as Turkey and Azerbaijan do not want Armenia to develop and execute multi-polar/multi-vector foreign policy enabling Yerevan to have a consortium of foreign economic, political and military alliances that can help Armenia consolidate its sovereignty and viability.
Now the sovereign citizens of the Republic of Armenia have the unique opportunity to convert the foreign-imposed special elections into a national and pan-national referendum on consolidation of Armenia’s sovereignty and diversification of its foreign alliances.
The voters also have the opportunity to once-and-for-all legally neutralize Armenian kleptocracy and oligarchy that is a consortium of various mafias led by former presidents Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan and fake Catholicos Karekin II and his clansmen such as Arch. Hovnan Derderian of Los Angeles’s Western Diocese, and Arch. Yezras of Moscow.
The Velvet must be replaced with the Steel Revolution through a clear mandate to institutionalize the Rule of Law.
A well written summary of events. But who is the new knight in shiny armour that is to liberate us from the past wrongdoings? Why didn’t someone make our nation aware of these misdeeds while these were happening? What is the secret formula that this new leader will use to bypass all the internal and external obstacles?