“Republican party created by Ashot Navasardyan was a small party of adherents and devotees” (video)
Mane and Nare differ from the children of their age; the heroes of 8-year-old and 3-year-old girls are neither from cartoons nor from tales. Though they know their grandfather, Ashot Navasardyan, only from the stories of their mothers, they say that he is their hero. “I know that he established independence and army,” says Mane Minasyan. 19 years ago on this day at the age of 47 the founder-chairman of the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) died unexpectedly. His partisan friends every year on this day pay visit to Yerablur. “He was an honest, caring, devoted, selfless and noble person.” Former Minister of Finance describes Ashot Navasardyan in this way. He says that still for a long time we will be trying to form those national values, which Navasardyan dreamt of. Minister of Finance prefers to speak less about the party Navasardyan dreamt of and established. “The party, which Navasardyan was creating, was a small party of devotees, but life goes on, the party is getting larger, changes happen in the party, new approaches, so they are incomparable.” Ashot Navasardyan’s wife Hasmik Navasardyan has decided that if the state doesn’t do, in the near future the fund established by her will present an initiative to declare day of political prisoners in Armenia. Armenia had more political prisoners than Georgia, Russia and Azerbaijan together. She says that at present there are also many political prisoners in Armenia. “If there is an outbreak, the state must gradually eliminate that outbreak, when a person raises his voice, when a person has problems, those problems must be eliminated.” Ashot Navasardyan was an Armenian politician, the founder of the Republican Party of Armenia. He had been a member of the opposition National Unity Party since 1968, and as a critic of the Soviet Union's totalitarian government has been an advocate of the ideas of the Armenian national hero, Garegin Nzhdeh. For the dissemination of his ideas for three times he was detained and sentenced to 17 years of imprisonment and 5 years of exile. In August of 1990 the Supreme Court of Armenia excused him on the bases of absence of corpus delicti.
