President of Armenia, Armén Sarkisian resigns from his post | News

The president of Armenia, Armén Sarkisian, resigned this Sunday from his position as the country's head of state, alluding to the lack of tools to face the sociopolitical crisis.

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"I thought about it a lot and decided, after having worked actively for about four years, to resign from the position of President of the Republic," Sarkisian said.

Sarkisián specified that the position as head of state does not have the necessary tools to face the difficult times that the country is going through, fundamentally in its foreign and domestic policy.

At the same time, Sargsyan pointed out that the reason why as president he has not been able to prevent the current national crisis is due to “the lack of appropriate tools, tools that any government official is equipped with a single document: the Constitution. It is in the current Basic Law that the roots of some of our problems are hidden”.

For the former official, the Armenian president cannot veto the laws that he considers inappropriate. “We are a parliamentary republic in form, but not in content. The meaning and purpose of my proposal was not to move from one form of government to another (from parliamentary to semi-presidential or presidential), but to create a state system based on checks and balances,” he added.

In turn, he criticized that both he and his family in some cases were victims of "several political groups" that were only interested in their past and in conspiracy theories and myths.

"In this difficult stage for our state, when national unity is needed, the Presidential Institute must not become the target of gossip and conspiracy theories, thus diverting public attention from the most important problems," he warned.

Likewise, the current former president called for taking significant, balanced and deeply thought-out actions, because "otherwise, we, the Armenians of the whole world, will not achieve the objective of our mission and we will find ourselves on the margins of history."

The former president also thanked citizens and compatriots around the world for "showing firmness, endurance, patience and courage in these difficult times for the country", as well as the soldiers and army officers and their families.

Armén Sarkisian assumed the presidency of the country on April 9, 2018 after being appointed by Parliament as a member of the Republican Party of Armenia.

The resignation of the 68-year-old politician comes amid tensions with the government, whose head is Nikol Pashinián, whom Sarkisian urged to resign after the country's defeat in the Nagorno Krabakh war against Azerbaijan in November 2020.

Azerbaijan won the war thanks to the help of Turkey and Armenia lost almost 70 percent of the territories it controlled in the region after the end of the 1992-1994 war.