System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian believes the solution to the crisis in Armenia is a democratic, constitutional way forward, snap parliamentary elections in particular, per PanArmenian.
In an interview with Vulture, Tankian described the ceasefire deal signed by Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan to end the war in Artsakh as “horrible” because the points of the ceasefire were very damaging to the Armenian nation.
“Since the November 10 ceasefire, Armenians have been grieving, not just for the young men that have died, but also for the 2,500-year-old historical homelands that we have lost to dictatorships who attacked with impunity and used disinformation along with high-grade weaponry. That obviously creates instability in Armenia, and it’s created a lot of grief and anger toward the current government of Nikol Pashinyan. He was the revolutionary leader that started the 2018 Velvet Revolution, a high point in history. Now is an incredibly low point in our history,” the artist said.
“The street opposition is made up of different parties that are mostly not even in Parliament; a lot of them are tied to older ruling regimes trying to gain power back, using the capitulation, or defeat, of Armenia as the excuse. It’s a very tenuous situation. People are angry. The majority of Armenians are in a state where they don’t know who to support. A lot of them are angry at what happened in the government. There’s issues of mismanagement of the war that are being raised, and other things. But they also don’t trust the former oligarchic regimes that have stolen from their population and created depopulation within the country for 20 or so years.”
Right now, Tankian said it’s a divisive time. “I think the solution to this is a democratic, constitutional way forward, and that is to hold early, snap parliamentary elections, which the current government at one point said it would do. The opposition had not favored it, because they are afraid that even with new elections, they’re less popular than the current government that lost the war. But, the only way forward has to be a democratic one. The army should not take over. Opposition shouldn’t just take over. No one should just take over. There should be f*cking elections. And they should be sooner than the two and a half years left on the mandate of the current Parliament. That’s what I have to say about that,” he added.
