Pashinyan's associate: Declaration of Independence betrays Armenia's interests

In an interview with Armenian media, Gevorg Papoyan, a ruling party MP and chairman of the Armenian National Assembly's Standing Committee on Finance, Credit and Budgetary Affairs, commented on the clauses of Armenia's Declaration of Independence.

"First of all, I think this is an issue that should be decided by the Constitutional Reform Commission. Obviously, there is a very big political component to this, because the constitution is primarily a political document, a new legal document, and ultimately not a legal document that allows us to say if such a formulation should be used or not," the MP said, per Caliber.Az.

"But one thing is clear, we are the ones who started this conversation, the Armenian Declaration of Independence seems to be ours, but it's not about the Republic of Armenia. This is an example of what we have or want to create, a state that should serve the integration of Karabakh into Armenia. And it's not about the Republic of Armenia. In this context, I think that we should finally have such a document, and it's not only about the document, we should have such textbooks, we should have such politicians, we should have such a political system, we should have such political parties for which the Republic of Armenia comes first in all situations.

Now we are saying that the independence of Armenia is the most important thing and we should never sacrifice the main thing for the secondary thing. The Republic of Armenia, and our statehood are the most important things. In spite of those in our political sphere referring to our Declaration of Independence and saying directly that no one needs Armenia if there is no Karabakh, I consider this unacceptable. I consider it anti-state, I consider it a betrayal of Armenia's statehood because our main goal should be Armenia," the MP said.