The Union of Armenian Volunteers (UAV) has issued a statement, condemning a speech Armenia’s first President, Chairman of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) delivered at the ANC active members’ meetings on November 11.

“It is difficult to agree with the appraisals of a number of problems of paramount importance made by Levon Ter-Petrosyan,” says the statement. “The ANC leaders responded to violence against the people by the authorities with a wait-and-see attitude. After assuming this attitude, how moral is it on the ANC’s part to accuse the people of indifference or weakness,” the statement says.

According to the UAV, “under the first President, the wrong conceptual approaches, as well as the Opposition’s present wrong tactics, force the Armenian authorities and people into making unacceptable concessions, which is pregnant with unpredictable consequences,” says the statement.

The UAV also stated that the leader cannot be “less resolute” than the people that elected him. “What is more, it is naïve and absurd to believe the malefactor torturing and plundering both the country and the people,” says the statement. The freedom fighter Zhirair Sefilyan is UAV Coordinator, UAV itself forming part of the ANC.