YEREVAN. – Ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MP Hakob Hakobyan, who also chairs the National Assembly Standing Committee on Social Affairs, believes that the country’s most important achievement in 2016 is the adoption of the new Electoral Code which, in his view, will guarantee the legitimacy of elections in Armenia.

“We made a political coup, so we can pass to a mechanism that will bring fair elections, and that there would be no doubts toward the legitimacy of the authorities,” Hakobyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The ruling party MP added, however, that the Sasna Tsrer armed group’s takeover of a police patrol regiment building in capital city Yerevan was not the Armenian society’s, but rather just a group of people’s discontent from the incumbent authorities.

The RPA deputy also stressed that the authorities acknowledged the shortcomings which the early April war—which Azerbaijan had unleashed against Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh)—had exposed, and therefore they launched corresponding changes.

“It’s hard for a country at war to decide which year is difficult, which is easy,” added Hakob Hakobyan. “Of course we had casualties. But on the other hand, heroes were born. Heroes are born at the cost of death.”