“If this is democracy, then nobody needs it,” Sarkisian told reporters, citing existential threats facing the country now.
“If there are more than 20 political prisoners now, if 150,000 people were simply expelled from a part of our homeland [Nagorno-Karabakh], then what democracy are you talking about?” he said.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who swept to power as a result of the 2018 mass protests, again claimed to have turned Armenia into a democracy when he addressed the European Parliament earlier in the day. He said his country “would have lost its independence and sovereignty had it not been democratic.”
Opposition groups, including Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK) accuse him of jailing political opponents, suppressing judicial independence and issuing political orders to law-enforcement bodies. The ex-president faced similar accusations when he governed Armenia from 2008-2018.
The “political prisoners” mentioned by him presumably include individuals arrested and prosecuted during last month’s anti-government protests in Yerevan sparked by the Azerbaijani military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. The protesters accused Pashinian of selling out Karabakh and its ethnic Armenian population that has fled the region. Sarkisian also held the Armenian premier responsible for the fall of Karabakh.