"Strong Armenia": The brawl in parliament was staged to distract public attention from Pashinyan`s failed foreign policy

ArmInfo. The brawl in parliament was orchestrated by the ruling Civil Contract faction to cover up the failure of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's foreign policy. Marianna Ghahramanyan, a member of parliament from the Strong Armenia faction, stated this in an interview with reporters on October 29.

According to her, the speaker of the Armenian Parliament, Ruben Rubinyan, is primarily responsible for the brawl in parliament. "I would like to especially emphasize that the speaker of the Armenian Parliament, Ruben Rubinyan, bears full responsibility for what happened." "He encouraged the provocateur, ruling party MP Taron Chakhoyan, and made no attempt to intervene," Kagramanyan noted.

At the same time, the MP expressed her conviction that if an opposition representative had been at the podium at that moment and had spoken as Chakhoyan had, Rubinyan would have called security within minutes. "However, instead, he watched the events as a bystander and enjoyed the situation in parliament. Therefore, I repeat: Rubinyan bears responsibility for what happened; he deliberately allowed the situation to escalate." "The incident was orchestrated by the ruling party and was a consequence of the government's question-and-answer session in parliament on October 28, during which the inconsistency of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's foreign policy was exposed," the opposition figure emphasized.

As Ghahramanyan explained, the ruling party's representatives were unable to provide a single answer regarding the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) project, specifically regarding which sections of Armenia's sovereign territory the road would pass through. Therefore, she claimed, on Pashinyan's orders, everything was done to divert public attention from this issue. "Pashinyan effectively handed over the road in the Syunik region to Azerbaijan without a signed peace treaty with Azerbaijan and, accordingly, any guarantees." Since government officials had no answers to the concerns voiced by the opposition, they likely decided to escalate the situation to divert public attention," the MP explained.

Strong Armenia faction secretary Tigran Abrahamyan noted that such incidents can occur, but he emphasized that presiding over parliament entails responsibility for promptly announcing a recess and ensuring access to the National Assembly for security personnel. "If a recess had been announced at the very beginning of the incident, I am sure it would not have reached the scale we witnessed," Abrahamyan noted.

At the same time, he said, despite the incident, the faction's work will continue. "We will continue our work as we began on August 2," the faction secretary concluded.

It should be noted that on October 29, after Taron Chakhoyan, a member of the ruling Civil Contract faction, made offensive remarks about the family of Narek Karapetyan, head of the Strong Armenia faction, a verbal altercation erupted in the Armenian parliament. It first escalated into a brawl between members of parliament, and then into a fight. As the situation escalated, Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Ruben Rubinyan did not call a recess, but merely called on members of parliament to decide whether they would continue the brawl or return to their seats. However, tensions not only did not subside, but actually escalated. The Speaker of Parliament was forced to call in representatives of the state security service to calm the members of parliament. The conflict continued in the parliament hallway. Law enforcement officers were forced to build a wall between the ruling and opposition deputies to calm them down. The brawl resulted in damage to government property in the meeting room.