"The martial law in Armenia was introduced for political reasons from the outset," the former Head of Public Relations and Information Center at the President's Office Ara Saghatelyan told an interview with 168 TV.
Saghatelyan argued that the series of criminal cases, one of them instituted against, come to prove his conviction. "The pivot of the criminal case was the organisation and the conduct of protest actions during the regime of martial law which was a fictious case," Saghatelyan said, when asked to comment the recent vote of the parliament lifting the martial law five months after the active military actions ended in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Saghatelyan pointed to the fact that the regime was lifted at the initiative of opposition factions, and the ruling "My Step" faction lacked political flair to initiate the move themselves.
At a remark that Armenia's president continues meeting with Pashinyan despite earlier calls for resignation, Saghatelyan said: " I think our country has no president as a functioning body. The one we have makes use of certain opportunities at the expense of state budget and imitates an operation of the institute of the President. I am neither a legal expert nor a political scientist to assert certainly but my assumption is there are numerous grounds to impeach the president," Saghatelyan said.