Villagers of Armenia’s Vayots Dzor, Syunik and Gegharkunik Provinces are boycotting the upcoming referendum for constitutional amendments, and farmer Tigran Yeghoyan confirmed the news today.
According to him, over the past two years, there are 20% more villagers with loans, and all the actions of the government are making the farmers lose hope again. “The problems with water supply haven’t been solved due to the activities of the hydroelectric station, veterinarians still receive low salaries, while ministers are already receiving tremendous amounts of money, and the government isn’t raising these issues. Nikol Pashinyan continues to destroy Armenia’s villages, offend villagers and implement programs for the unification of communities to pursue political goals. Taking into consideration the fact that the villagers don’t receive state support, I call on them to boycott the referendum for constitutional amendments, which has served as another occasion for more tension in the villages,” he stated.
In his turn, former Member of Parliament Lernik Aleksanyan stated that more than half of the problems in the agriculture sector are linked to organization of labor by the State and villagers and that this has been going on for 30 years now.
The referendum for making amendments to an article of the Constitution of Armenia is scheduled for April 5. The authorities offer early termination of the powers of 9 members of the Constitutional Court, including the president of the Constitutional Court, referring to them as representatives of the former “regime”. Almost all political parties, except for the ruling My Step Alliance and former President Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s Armenian National Congress political party have refused to participate in the referendum. The referendum will succeed, if more than half of voters say YES to the amendments and if there is at least a quarter of voters on the voters’ list (650,000 people).