“Our task is to stop and turn back the millennial wheel of our people’s emigration”- Nikol Pashinyan

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan delivered remarks via live video at the discussion titled ‘Armenia Tomorrow: Citizen Diplomacy at Work’ organized by the Institute of Armenian Studies of the University of Southern California.

PM Pashinyan said the meaning of existence of the Republic of Armenia is to concentrate the Armenians’ social, economic, financial, scientific potential or most of it in its territory and ensure the security and normal development of that potential. “Our task is to stop and turn back the millennial wheel of our people’s emigration, to make Armenia a state aimed at preserving the potential of Armenians and ensuring its normal activity. In order to reach this goal we should reach the point that the citizen of Armenia is the highest leadership. This must be the cornerstone of Armenia’s future”, PM Pashinyan said.

He added that the priority task of the new government is to become the people’s institutional power guarantor.

Asked how to keep the citizens engaged in political processes in the period from election to election, Nikol Pashinyan stated: “I think after these changes we have no problem of ensuring the engagement of citizens: the most important is that the citizen fights for his/her right”.

As for the future of the Diaspora, the PM said here the issue of engagement is sometimes conditioned by the provisions of the Constitution. “The Constitution says that for instance a person can be appointed as a minister who has been only a citizen of Armenia in the past four years and has lived in Armenia in the past five years. We think this regulation doesn’t reflect our national aspirations and creates artificial barriers for the engagement of the Diaspora. We plan to eliminate these barriers so that we can use the Diaspora’s potential in the process of development of state institutions”, the PM said.