Harutiunian said late on Monday that he is taking the “extreme” step to try to draw greater international attention to the plight of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population struggling with severe shortages of food, medicine and energy. The Karabakh leadership will resort to “tougher actions” if the humanitarian situation in the region does not improve within a week, he said without elaborating.
Harutiunian spent the following night in a tent pitched in Stepanakert’s main square, the scene of the sit-in that began late last week.
“There are other ways of presenting the situation in Artsakh [to the outside world,]” Tigran Abrahamian, a senior member of the opposition Pativ Unem alliance, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “I think that the Artsakh president’s main task must be crisis management.”
In particular, Abrahamian said, the authorities should in Stepanakert do a better job of presenting “factual information” about the humanitarian crisis in Karabakh to foreign governments and international organizations and coordinating with Armenian Diaspora groups.
Andranik Tevanian, a lawmaker representing the opposition Hayastan alliance, was more scathing about Harutiunian’s decision, calling it a “cheap theater.”
“A sit-in is a demonstration of one's incompetence if it is done by the leader of a country,” he wrote on Facebook. “But if you have taken that step, then you should target the right addressee and give clear assessments.”
Tevanian said that Harutiunian should have first and foremost called Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian out on his recent recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh which the Armenian opposition believes only emboldened Baku to tighten the screws on the Karabakh Armenians.
A top political ally of Harutiunian rejected the opposition criticism. “If they can't help us with anything, they had better keep quiet,” he said.
Opposition leaders in Yerevan have for years accused Harutiunian of furthering Pashinian’s agenda. They claim that the Karabakh leader still maintains close ties with Pashinian despite the fact that his party joined Karabakh opposition groups in condemning the Armenian government’s stance on the conflict with Azerbaijan.