It's not the authorities that gave us the mandates, so they can take them away, the mandate was given to us by the Armenian people; 270 thousand citizens voted for the bloc "Armenia" with a certain goal and agenda, ARF Dashnaktsutyun Supreme Body representative and deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament from the opposition Ishkhan Saghatelyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.
He recalled that one of the bloc's main messages during the campaign was to remove the government of evil and lead the country out of the current situation, prevent the expulsion of Armenians from Artsakh, build a strong Armenia, and bring dignified peace.
Today, the agenda of building a strong Armenia and a dignified peace is outside of parliament and lies, in his estimation, also through the removal of the government.
"We serve the agenda of those citizens of Armenia who gave us the mandate to do so. Today, the agendas of the parliamentary government and the opposition do not overlap. We said that we would go to parliament exclusively with our agenda. And we did, and the authorities ran away. Tomorrow, if we need to go to parliament again with this agenda, the authorities will run away again because they have nothing to say.
As for the attempts to intimidate us by depriving us of our mandates, this is for them that mandate is the aim of life. Didn't we (both members of Armenia bloc and With Honor bloc) struggle before 9 November, when we have no mandates yet? We have fought and will continue to fight with the same resolve and the same success, because we know what to fight for. Intimidating us by depriving us of mandates is nonsense.
We are committed to the agenda for which we have received votes, and we do not want to be discouraged by the authorities. It does not bother us at all. We have more important things to do, we have a mandate from the people, which they do not have, no matter how much they try to prove otherwise. They go to cafes accompanied by numerous police officers, they go to bed and walk the streets with fear in their hearts, they know they won't be able to hold on to power for long. They have reasons for all this.
We know what we are fighting for and we know that we will not be ashamed to look our children in the eye. But they don't have the answer to that question.
The mandate will remain for us just a tool of struggle. If the authorities want to take it away from us, then let them. It will have no effect on our struggle. If they see it as a tool to blackmail us in order to take us to the Parliament and then speculate with that, then they made a mistake in their calculations", said Saghatelyan.
Earlier it was reported that the ruling Civil Contract party in Armenia was discussing the issue of depriving opposition deputies of their mandates.