Hakob Badalyan: Today marks the 26th tragic anniversary of the October 27 events

Hakob Badalyan writes on his Telegram Channel:

“There is no need to remind anyone what a heavy blow October 27 (ed. 1999) dealt to our newly independent statehood — a statehood that had just come out of war and was facing enormous challenges. All the more so, since much has been said about it over the years

Still, I will say something that is not trendy, not ‘fashionable.’ I have said it before and will say it again: The Republic of Armenia withstood that terrible blow and survived. Yes, the Republic of Armenia has preserved its statehood and continued to develop. Unfortunately, that development was accompanied by the ‘growth’ of systemic defects. It would be absurd, to put it mildly, to attribute those defects to October 27 alone, as they had existed even earlier.

Some might say that Vazgen Sargsyan would have cleansed Armenia of those defects, and many claim that he was assassinated precisely for that reason.

For years, that ‘idea’ went hand in hand with another propaganda ‘narrative’ — the so-called ‘Meghri version.’

Both of these narratives were nothing more than propaganda. They merely fueled manipulations and political games around the October 27 tragedy, exploited for political and public gain for years — even decades.

In that sense, the bloody terror of October 27 became, so to speak, a kind of ‘chewing gum for the opposition’ in Armenia’s public and political life before 2018, and ‘chewing gum for the authorities’ after 2018.

This is the plain truth — setting aside emotional definitions and judgments.”