The wise and insightful people of the Republic of Armenia are the true authors of the peace strategy, the peace agenda, and the peace policy, and I have no doubt about this, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in his speech at the 7th Congress of the Civil Contract Party, recalling that although he had spoken about this several times, the congress was the most appropriate place to complete the topic.
“I must once again speak about the scenes of the 2021 snap parliamentary election campaign, when in the first rows of our rallies I saw many women of middle and older age.
For 4.5 years I have often thought about this and could not find the most precise description, the word or expression for them. I thought long and came to the conclusion that the right definition is alma mater – the nourishing mother.
But I am speaking about those mothers who put bread on the table not only for their husbands and children, but also for their large families. In our reality, there are many such mothers, who are the silent axis of families. They are silent because they do not have time to speak.
Moreover, the burden of the family and the strategic planning of the family are on them. They are silent because they have to wrap dolma, they are silent because they have to prepare khash, they are silent because they have to bake lavash and bread, pickle vegetables, cook jam, they are silent because sometimes speaking makes no sense.
They are silent because who would listen to them? They are silent because the Armenian proverb says: a speaker needs a listener. And from the very first days of the 2021 election campaign this became the number one question for me: why are these mothers, the nourishing mothers of families, coming to our rallies, sometimes in house clothes, in slippers, making it obvious that they decided to come at the last minute, 5 minutes before, and their coming was an outburst, because they had something to say. From the first days of the campaign I understood that my main task was to listen to them and turn that into practical policy.
What I heard from them shook me,” the Prime Minister said.
According to him, those women said only two things. First, they expressed gratitude for signing the November 9, 2020 document and stopping the war.
“This was truly shocking for me.
A significant part of Armenia’s political and cultural elite was accusing me of treason, while the nourishing mothers of Armenia were thanking me, and both – for the same thing.
I asked those mothers: what are you thanking me for? Their answer was concrete – for saving the lives of tens of thousands of servicemen, for stopping the war, and, as they said, for saving Armenia. I countered – but what about the thousands of victims, and the fact that we could not prevent the war before it started…” Pashinyan noted.
According to him, those women said: “Go after peace, we need peace, only peace.”
“I understood that this is how the people speak – yes, the people, including the men,” Nikol Pashinyan added.
