Read on Twitter
A thread that includes Nikol's major pitfalls throughout his 2.5 year reign and explains why I think Nikol is unfit to lead. Had a lot of folks asking me to post this publicly (for those who don't know + those saying we don't have reasons to dislike or criticize him).
Let's start off w/ the basics of mutual respect & tact that are important in any politician's arsenal. Senseless jabs against Russia, aggression & personal insults towards Aliyev, refusal to go to the May 9 (WW2 Rememb. Parade) in Moscow after getting a personal invite from Putin
It was Nikol who a year ago was dancing drunk in Shushi, told Aliyev publicly that "Karabakh is Armenia and period." This is what he did instead of playing it smart, building up the military, and buying us time. This statement started off a tragic series of events we now witness.
Next point of criticism that's major is the Israeli embassy, which is now closed. This angered Iran, who I am just happy was wise enough not to react and let it slide. Next, we move on to Georgia/Ukraine.
We have continuously and historically voted pro-Russia in the UN and other international bodies, alienating Geo/Ukr, but then at home, did everything possible to push us further away from Russia itself, creating a dissonance and essentially leaving us alone and unprotected.
With all this in mind, our relationships with our neighbors ended up as follows.
Russia/Iran - neutral - relations worse than before 2018
Georgia - neutral - relations about the same as before 2018
Az/Tur - disaster - worse than before 2018, tensions clearly on the rise
Russia/Iran - neutral - relations worse than before 2018
Georgia - neutral - relations about the same as before 2018
Az/Tur - disaster - worse than before 2018, tensions clearly on the rise
If this isn't the dumbest situation, geopolitically-speaking, that someone in Armenia could have carefully crafted in 2 years, I truly don't know what is. Let's say we assume that's he is just inexperienced with foreign policy and move on to internal affairs, where he fails again
Our Duxov man cried corruption for 2.5 years and we have zero arrests, zero cases, zero rulings, and he showed zero dux. We did, however, spent government funds on playing power games and catching Robert, Tsarukyan, and the rest, keeping them for two days, and then releasing them
This is a continuous cycle that happens 4-5 times a year, and to date, we have claimed zero dollars that were stolen, which he cries about every day. Our NSS (Armenian KGB) directors have changed 6 times in the last two years, making the entire intelligence agency useless
NSS had a leadership change essentially every 3-4 months & we think this is okay given that our country has been in a state of unofficial war for 30 years? Absurd. It just goes to show that our PM has no decision-making abilities and can't take a specific course- he's erratic.
With his party controlling ~70% of parliament, no one had any power to do anything. Nikol had free reign for close to three years and is still crying corruption, when his colleague with similar views (Saakashvili) basically eradicated all this in Georgia in 6-8 months.
MoD, to be able to save money from the budget, was not buying quality weapons or equipment. We bought a $3M system from Kazakhstan that was decommission in the 1960s. This is information confirmed by 6 former military/NSS officials. Why we were doing this - only Nikol knows...
Before talking about the war, let's look and try to see if Nikol had a specific agenda. One of his first missions and worries was the removal of Armenian Religion classes from schools and the introduction of sex-ed. Nikol also frequently fought with the Church over various issues
Ask yourselves - was the presence of Armenian Religion classes the biggest issue facing Armenia when Nikol took office? Why remove a central part of our identity and culture from schools. Just some food for thought about what Nikol was actually doing for 2.5 years.
This is why when we ask why people's lives didn't improve and everything stayed the same, people can't respond. Because the only changes were ideological, pro-west, and anti-traditionalist, aimed at erasing the Armenian culture from our educational systems and nation as a whole.
Now, the war. For 45 days, we were being fed propaganda about what's going on, which now clearly contradicts what was happening. Our Army was not deployed & our guys did not have central leadership. There are reports of Nikol feuding with Kocharyan during a military mtg.
We ask Nikol to give a timeline. His statements on his lives, posts, Artsrun's crap, & Shushan's tweets make no sense. Try to build a timeline of what happened - you can't. They all contradict each other. The time of the signing of the papers vs the time of the statements that
Shushi was ours don't make sense. All we see is that we forcibly retreated with Nikol's command bc of the lack of people- that's all that is evident to me based on the information from ppl on the ground. The other part of the misinformation is the number of soldiers who died.
We have 4-5K martyred and 7K+ critically injured. The families of the injured are starting GoFundMe's because they can't afford surgeries - our government has basically abandoned them. People in Artsakh can't afford the $200 to move their belongings. Our government is silent.
Nikol is in a bunker arresting those criticizing him. His party is refusing to show up to the parliament. Honestly, Nikol and Levon (who was his mentor) advocated for a complete capitulation from these lands since the '90s - it's not new.
It's in Levon's speeches, interviews, articles, and Nikol's publications and books - all publicly available and viewable. We have Rus gov-affiliated channels stating that Rus was sending weapons starting Oct 1 & they provided Nikol with every system he asked for for free.
They presented 5 different paths to stop the war, each better than what we have right now in terms of lives and lands lost. He declined all of them and continued this charade.
He went on FB live 3 days ago complaining someone stole his cologne; he might not be okay mentally either at this point. I just know that with a country in this condition, he's unfit to lead. He doesn't have the trust of the populace, he's not experienced, and at times, just dumb
I can honestly go on with what he did wrong & I can write an entire book on how his diplomacy is the most disastrous in the history of Arm, & so is each one of his actions in the last 40 days. But that's it for now. If you want to learn more or question anything here, please DM.
