Artsakh MP says Pashinyan's rule poses 'systemic threat' to Armenian statehood

An Artsakh lawmaker has accused Armenia’s current leadership of undermining state security to cling to power, rejecting what she called a “Facebook-driven” politics and questioning the government’s legitimacy.

In a social media post on Thursday, Metakse Hakobyan, a deputy from the Artsakh National Assembly’s Justice faction, said the authorities “do not constitute a government in the true sense”, arguing that power implies responsibility, state thinking and accountability.

“What today is called ‘government’ has turned into a systemic threat to Armenia’s statehood, national security and historical continuity,” she wrote.

She accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s team of being “a self-serving mechanism that survives at the expense of the state”, pointing to the 2020 war’s casualties, the loss and depopulation of Nagorno-Karabakh, the erosion of state institutions and deepening social divisions.

“In this reality, speaking in terms of ‘government versus opposition’ is self-deception,” she said. “There is no political competition, there is an existential confrontation: the state or its final destruction.”

Hakobyan said the Armenian leadership had “exchanged the state’s security for the preservation of power” and called for “state self-defense” through public pressure, legal action and political consolidation, stressing she was not calling for violence.

“The issue is no longer who will form the next government,” she said. “The question is whether Armenia can politically and legally neutralize the danger that is eroding it from within.”

“What must be neutralized today is not a person, but a political behavior – a mindset and a system leading Armenia to the abyss,” she added.