LOS ANGELES—During his brief visit to Los Angeles, Armenia’s Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan met with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Western US Central Committee and guests representing affiliate organizational and religious leaders during a luncheon Sunday at Patina Restaurant.
In welcoming the Prime Minister, ARF Western US Central Committee chairman Dr. Viken Hovsepian said: “To have the Prime Minister and other government officials among us and to be content with mere diplomatic and cheerful expressions, we would have ignored our national responsibility.”
“On the way to convey to our nation’s people the concept of collective effort and to instill in them renewed hope, it is important that the leadership remain unwavering to the principles which have become sacred to a nation and have become the guarantors of our collective and unifying force,” added Hovsepian.
Sargsyan thanked the ARF Central Committee for the meeting and, following brief remarks, responded to audience questions that ranged from the government’s role in fighting corruption, its oversight on distribution of aid in various sectors and its outlook on socio-economic development of Armenia.
What should have been said to the Prime Minister is the following:
“As a community we are growing impatient with the Armenian Government’s apathy toward serious national crises developing in our homeland, from the degradation of the environment and depletion and exploitation of natural resources, to the exponential rise in outmigration and unemployment. As the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, we will commit our organization’s resources to rallying Armenian communities around the world to apply serious pressure on your government until it corrects these wrongs, both inside and outside Armenia, just as we did during the Protocols fiasco.”