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YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his spouse Anna Hakobyan are in the United States on a working visit.
As part of the trip to Los Angeles, the PM and his wife participated in a gala dinner in honor of them with over 700 representatives of the community in attendance.
Spiritual leaders, city and state authorities, Armenian Cabinet members, the Armenian Ambassador to the US as well as the Consul General in Los Angeles, Armenian consuls in Fresno and Las Vegas and many others were among the attendees.
“I would like to thank you all for today’s glorious day because this meeting, this atmosphere, this day that we all are spending together is an unforgettable event, and I believe that those who were following from distance must also consider this day to be memorable,” the PM said in his remarks.
“I would like to thank the Armenians of California, the Armenians of the United States and generally our countrymen in the Diaspora who have for many years zealously preserved their Armenian identity and are passing down this identity to their children, having inherited it from their fathers and grandfathers. I would like to say that every time I feel pride when I see how on April 24th the Armenians of California and Armenians around the world are standing up and are signaling to the entire world with a powerful march that we haven’t rejected our identity and we will not reject our identity.
Today we are the bearers of our history, and from the lessons brought by our enriched history, the cruel lessons, the glorious lessons, we have an opportunity to change the historic destiny of our people and take our people out from the historic cycle which we unfortunately have regularly survived. This cycle is approximately the following: proceeding from geopolitical circumstances we are getting a chance, an opportunity, and then due to geopolitical circumstances we mostly lose this chance and together with this we lose also the fatherland and the nation. And the biggest lesson from this history is that we, unfortunately, are very frequently not in charge of our own destiny. And when it is said that a historic chance exists for our state and people, I understand it in a way that we have an opportunity to take the wheel of our destiny into our own hands. Today we, most importantly, have the potential to do so, and this is the main part of today’s message.
Generally it is said – what is the key factor of the change that took place in Armenia? It is that every citizen felt and feels their own individual power. Therefore the time has come for us to make the next step also, that we as a people feel and be able to utilize our collective power. This is the factor which must carry out a truly historic revolution in our destiny, and this is the logical continuation of an individual’s change of self-esteem, when the individual, the citizen felt their power.
Now is the time for the collectiveness of the individuals, which is called the Armenian people, the Armenian nation, to feel its creative power, and set a concrete goal of applying this creative power, and this goal can be one – the strong and powerful Republic of Armenia, strong and powerful Artsakh and a united fatherland. The time has come that we, as a people, feel our power and stand side by side. Today’s event is about this. Today’s event is about the Armenian people being united more than ever before, and the Armenian people are ready for victory more than ever before.
I would like to once again emphasize that I find the greatest collective mission of ours to be the restoration of our greatness and the self-awareness of our greatness. We must restore our greatness in the economy, we must restore our greatness in science, we must restore our greatness in arts, we must restore our greatness in diplomacy, we must restore our greatness in sports and overall in all areas.
It is no coincidence that I began today’s assembly with Paruyr Sevak’s poem because it combines two facts in a very important way – respect towards other nations, which must not disturb us but on the opposite must help us to respect ourselves even more and increase other’s respect towards us. For this, we need only one thing – to formalize a common goal and work together for this united goal. The name of this goal is clear and simple – the name of this goal is the Republic of Armenia, the name of this goal is the Republic of Artsakh.
Therefore, long live the Republic of Armenia, long live Artsakh, long live the Diaspora and long live the Armenian people,” the PM said.
The trailer of Velvet Revolution, a film about the 2018 Armenian revolution, was screened at the gala evening.
Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan