Twenty days for blank answer: Opposition MP is surprised by RA MoD`s response to his request

ArmInfo. It took 20 days for the Ministry of Defense of Armenia to respond to the written request with a blank sentence. Member of the Armenian Parliament from the  "Hayastan" ("Armenia") opposition faction, ARF member Gegham Manukyan, reported this on his Facebook page.

"From the rostrum of parliament, Minister of Defense Suren Papikyan publicly promised to give me a surprise on December 24. I don't know what he was going to do that day, but the answer I received from the Ministry of Defense on December 22 is no less surprising," the MP noted.

In this vein, Manukyan said that on December 4 he sent a written request to Papikyan to find out how the RA Armed Forces perceived the statement of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at a press conference on November 24, 2023 that "today we got rid of 5th columns in the army."

The MP  informed that he asked Papikyan six questions in total. "It took Papikyan twenty days to answer these questions, instead of the 5 days required by law. As a result, I received a one-sentence answer:  "The Ministry of Defense of Armenia has no other explanations than those given by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia." More than strange remain silent for twenty days, and then declare that the boss is right in any case," stated Manukyan.

At the same time, Manukyan considers the answer of the General Prosecutor's Office of Armenia to the question about the "5th column" which, according to Nikol Pashinyan, served the interests of other states, remarkable.

According to him, the Prosecutor General's Office, when asked to clarify how many criminal cases under the article on espionage were initiated in 2021-2023, clearly stated that only one criminal case was initiated.  "The Ministry of Defense is in a difficult situation - it had to give a specific response to Pashinyan's irresponsible statement with facts and formulations, which it, naturally, could not do. However, 'a man must be responsible for his words'. Therefore, irresponsible statements must also be held accountable. In any case, today I will send a second request to Papikyan and expect to receive clear answers to all 6 questions, as required by RA legislation," Manukyan concluded.