CELEBRATIONS MARKING ARF’S 116TH ANNIVERSARY CONTINUE

Yerkir.am
December 22, 2006

Another event marking the 116th anniversary of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation was held at the Yerevan Chamber Music House
on December 15.

Vahan Hovhannisian, a member of the ARF Bureau and a National
Assembly vice speaker, said that the day is marked in 30 countries
with significant Armenian communities.

After its foundation 116 years ago, the ARF began its fight to liberate
the Armenian people. The ARF’s task was to create home for the Armenian
people, who at that time were not even a majority in their homeland.

Merely a quarter century later, the ARF created an independent Armenia
on one part of the eastern Armenia. We had a weak Armenia, with many
problems with its neighbors, with newly established Army, hundreds of
thousand of exiles and no state budget. But what was most important,
after 700 years, Armenia appeared on the world. For all those years,
Hovhannisian said, the ARF was guided by one: "Love your homeland
more than you love yourself and your pocket."

"Following this rule, the ARF prime ministers did not build palaces
for themselves, the ministers did not accumulate money, the first
president, Aram Manukian, who died of an illness, did not go to Berlin
or Paris to seek cure," he said.

When the ARF was in exile, it began to work in the Diaspora, helping
the survivors of the Genocide, not letting them to assimilate. "We
were sure that one day Armenia would become independent again, and
will return what the bolshevism took from us," he said, adding that
one should not expect that everything would improve in a matter of
months; the former regime has made so many mistakes in the initial
stage that we continue to feel the consequences.

The ARF has the answers to all the questions: how to root out
corruption, restore the moral environment, restructure the education
system, restructure the army, and how to deal with the neighbors.