They commented on the protests during a session of the rubber-stamp legislature fully controlled by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. It took place two days before Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian’s next major rally in Yerevan that could be followed by nonstop actions aimed at forcing Pashinian to resign.
“What is Bagrat offering the Armenian society?” said Jeyhun Mammadov, one of those lawmakers. “The alternative to peace is war. Is the Armenian state and society ready for war? I think that the Armenian people should show that fraudulent cleric, behind whom the remnants of the former regime are hiding, his place.”
Another deputy, Tural Gyanjaliyev, insulted Galstanian and accused him of “revanchism.”
“Armenia’s political elite must get rid of the Diaspora’s and the church’s manipulations and finally start living in peace with neighbors, thereby not allowing France to draw the Armenian people into revanchism,” he said.
The parliament speaker, Sahiba Gafarova, encouraged these and other deputies to spread such statements on social media.
Earlier this month, other Azerbaijani parliamentarians lambasted the Armenian Apostolic Church, which has voiced strong support for Galstanian’s protest movement. Some of them also proposed that Pashinian be officially invited to Baku.
Both Galstanian and the church as a whole have also faced strong verbal attacks from Pashinian and his political allies ever since the outbreak of the protests last month. The latter have also threatened to impose new taxes on the church.
The movement led by Galstanian has been joined or endorsed by virtually all Armenian opposition groups. They have for years accused Pashinian of making far-reaching concessions to Azerbaijan as well as Turkey for the sake of clinging to power.