The civil initiative "I'm Against" has responded to Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan's June 26 statement that throwing coins at ministers as a mark of protest is all-permissiveness and anarchy.
The initiative points out that though the authorities enjoy all human rights and freedoms, their rights and freedoms end where other people's rights are violated. "In these cases it is no longer a freedom but outrage and if freedom is considered to be one of the columns of democracy then all-permissiveness is already a column of anarchy. So, being tolerant towards anarchy is to threaten the country", says the statement.
"64 representatives of the parliamentary majority pretend to be 68 people and violate the Constitution of Armenia, the decision of the Constitutional Court, the constitutional rights of the citizens, the laws of Armenia, the rights of other MPs and take steps running counter to the public opinion. All these phenomena deserve reprimand and criminal penalty", say the activists.
They also say that Armenia has a number of problems, whose settlement demands urgent interference of the Government and specific programs. Among the problems they point out the presence of irresponsible and incompetent officials in the Armenian Government, as well as inefficient work of the Government, which has considerably increased poverty and migration.
In addition, the initiative stresses the impunity of the authors of unconstitutional legislative initiatives, the adoption of laws with rough violations, the police's illegal actions and hostile attitude towards people, as well as the ungrounded rise in utility tariffs.
"The Prime Minister had better instructed the Justice Minister and the Head of Police to study the policemen's work style in the course of peaceful protest actions from the viewpoint of European conventions and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights", the activists say.
To note, while the Parliament was considering the updated scandalous bill on accumulative pensions, the citizens were holding a protest action. They threw coins at Armenian Minister of Education and Science Armen Ashotyan and Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Artem Asatryan. The Prime Minister qualified the protest action as violation of human rights.