Democracy must become Armenia’s benchmark

February 16, 2011 - 17:19 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan should step down and finally oversee the conduct of post-Soviet Armenia’s first free polls since 1991, according to former Foreign Minister of Armenia, Heritage opposition party leader.

“The nation he aspires to represent deserves no less. Democracy must become Armenia’s benchmark, not a motto thrown about to Western ‘partners’,” Raffi Hovannisian said in his article published by Foreign Policy Journal.

“Modern-day Turkey must face history and itself, recognize the great genocide, and cease its unlawful and inhuman occupation of Western Armenia.”

“Mountainous Karabakh, or Artsakh, is Armenian land, his predecessors lost what they never had in a war of aggression they unleashed two decades ago, and they will never see it again except as good neighbours. Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliev would do himself and humanity a necessary favor by respecting the rights of his own citizens, by returning the Armenian heartlands, including Shahumyan and Nakhichevan, still under Azerbaijani occupation to their rightful owners, and by making full redress to the hundreds of thousands of Armenians, Lezgins, Talishes, Tats, and other minorities which he and his have attempted to destroy,” Hovhannisian stresses, urging Georgian President to stop trampling the ethnic, religious, and linguistic rights of the Armenian region known to all as Javakhk.

“Russia’s leaders, too, must get with the game and finally recognize the fundamental rights of their “strategic ally.” It’s time to end the imperialistic, even if soft, design to control Armenia as its traditional, God-given “forepost.” Either accept Armenia’s sovereignty and stand in true partnership with it - internationally, nationally, democratically - or let it go and face a new day,” Heritage leader concluded.