Pashinyan’s Chief of Staff Responds To My Criticism of his Useless Trip to L.A. — By Harut Sassounian

Arayik Harutyunyan, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Chief of Staff, responded on Facebook to my criticism of his and former Ambassador Lilit Makunts’ controversial trip to Los Angeles.

Here is my reply to his baseless comments:

1)  I am deeply touched that Harutyunyan devoted his valuable time as a clerk for Pashinyan to respond to my column. I guess he has nothing better to do. Since the country is so well managed, my column must have been the most important item on his agenda!

2)  Rather than responding to my serious criticisms of the bungling duo’s misadventures in Los Angeles, Harutyunyan resorted to name-calling which shows a lack of justification for their disastrous trip.

3)  Harutyunyan called me “an over-the-hill columnist in the U.S. media field”:

a)  I am glad Harutyunyan knows that I am a journalist which proves that he is not completely clueless.

b)  If I were truly an “over-the-hill” journalist, why did Harutyunyan waste his time to reply to a worthless columnist? Why is my weekly analysis reprinted by dozens of newspapers and websites around the world? Furthermore, he should know that Pashinyan disagrees with his assessment of my journalistic skills. On April 17, 2019, the Prime Minister wrote on Facebook that my newspaper, The California Courier, is “one of the most prestigious newspapers of the Diaspora.”

c)  Harutyunyan vainly boasted that with one trip to Los Angeles, he destroyed the lies against the Pashinyan regime. He is wrong because there are hardly any Pashinyan supporters left in and out of Armenia.

d)  If Pashinyan had such a large number of supporters in Los Angeles, why did Harutyunyan and Makunts keep their visit a secret from the community, meeting with just a small group of hand-picked supporters?

e)  Harutyunyan claimed that the expenses of their trip to Los Angeles were not paid by the Armenian government. He said that they were on vacation. I view this claim with suspicion because the cost of their flights to Los Angeles and a week-long stay at a hotel probably exceeds several times their monthly salaries. Secondly, their announced plan — to dispel “misinformation” about the Pashinyan regime — sounds more like a political activity than a vacation. I doubt they went to Disneyland or visited other tourism sites.

f)  If the government did not pay their trip expenses, they may have found an oligarch to pay for them, in which case, it should have been reported to the Armenian government as a gift.

g)  Harutyunyan claimed that he and Makunts did not inform the Consul General of Armenia of their visit. How can Armenia’s local representative be left in the dark that two of the Prime Minister’s highest officials are in town? Now we know why she was not present at any of their public meetings!

h)  Harutyunyan gave the excuse that I was not invited because I would have ruined their meetings. If Pashinyan was so popular in Los Angeles, what are they afraid of? One of Pashinyan’s supporters confirmed that they kept their visit a secret because they were scared that their public meetings would have been disrupted.

i)  Harutyunyan incorrectly described as non-Armenian the Armenian TV stations that interviewed them: ARTN, AMGA, AABC, and USArmenia.

j)  Harutyunyan ended his diatribe on Facebook with an empty warning: “we have decided to systematically destroy the monopoly of lies to the American-Armenian community by him [Sassounian] and those like him.” Harutyunyan thus provoked his small circle of blind followers in Yerevan to write vile comments about me, without knowing anything about me.

To make matters worse, at a luncheon with Pashinyan supporters in Glendale, one of the guests questioned Harutyunyan about the regime’s approach to the Armenian national ideology, saying, “You are making not only territorial concessions, but also giving up on Armenian ideology.” Harutyunyan shamelessly told the audience, “Armenian nationalism is a very dangerous thing. Your thinking is very dangerous.”

Unfortunately, Harutyunyan is confusing nationalism with chauvinism. There is nothing wrong with people being proud of their nation, history and culture. Pashinyan has deracinated the nation of its several millennia-long history. The Prime Minister is acting as if the Armenian nation came into existence only after he assumed power in 2018. That is why he is against Armenia’s history, religion, culture, and sacred national symbols. With his myopic view of the Armenian nation, Armenia is not only cut off from its past, but also loses its vision for a glorious future.

The well-known Armenian poet Baruyr Sevag wrote a very memorable poem describing who we are as Armenians. I suggest that Harutyunyan read this masterpiece, to restore his Armenian identity. Here is an excerpt from that poem: